Raising Caine

Chapter Fifteen. NEAR GAS GIANTS ALL SYSTEMS FROM V 1581 TO GJ 1248

The bridge of the Arbitrage was packed tight with the Lurkers’ crew. Only the two low-breed aspirants to Elevation, Jesel and Suzruzh, were absent, ensuring that the Aboriginals remained locked in their quarters. Nezdeh rose into the microgravity. “We have finalized our plans.” She nodded toward Idrem.

He activated his beltcom’s projector: eight wire-thin arms emerged from the top of the unit. A moment later, a crude, semi-flat holograph was floating a meter above it. The image was a stylized Aboriginal graphic depicting the refueling operations of the Arbitrage. “Attend. This ship was to conduct two to three more days of fuel harvesting here at V 1581.4. It was then scheduled to break orbit and head for its prearranged shift point to Sigma Draconis, here.” Idrem gestured toward a pulsing cross-hairs symbol, far beyond the heliopause. “It would have taken them five weeks to reach this point at an approximate velocity of zero point two cee: a total of thirty-eight days from now. Keeping to that schedule would prevent the Aboriginals in this system from suspecting that the Arbitrage has been seized.

“However, we may no longer do so.” Idrem brought up a schematic of the shift-carrier. “In addition to minor damage that our attacks inflicted upon this hull’s fuel handling capacity, we also destroyed one of the tanker/tenders when the Aboriginals attempted to ram us with it.”

Tegrese frowned. “So the Aboriginals back at the second planet will detect and inspect this refueling delay.”

“They would notice it eventually, but we will be sure to report it before then.”

Zurur Deosketer sounded skeptical. “Will the Aboriginals trust a report that does not come from the captain of record?”

Brenlor smiled. “No, but fortunately, the Aboriginal captain will make the report.”

“The Aboriginal captain is dead.”

“His voice is not.”

Idrem expanded upon Brenlor’s response. “The Aboriginals record all communiqués. So, once we have recalibrated the comm array on the Red Lurker to emulate the Arbitrage’s, we shall send a damage report and revised mission timeline using edited clips of the voice of the dead captain. The Aboriginal force back at Planet Two will have questions. But given the transmission delay of almost twenty minutes, it will not seem unusual that some other member of the command staff would answer. Accordingly, Kozakowski will reply as we instruct.”

“Consequently, the Arbitrage shall resume her current timetable with a four- or five-day delay. But she shall never arrive at Sigma Draconis.” Idrem waved his hand over his beltcom: a glittering three-dimensional array of the stars within fifteen light-years floated before them. He pointed toward one incarnadine chip: it pulsed as his finger neared it. “Our present location.” He moved his finger until it rested on an orange-yellow dot, which also bloomed. “Sigma Draconis; just under eight point three light-years. But our actual destination is here”—he pointed at a more distant, dual-lobed red spot—“GJ 1230. It has other names as well, all equally uninspiring.”

Tegrese squinted, frowned. “It is almost twelve light-years from this system. How shall we reach it? This wretched hull can barely shift two-thirds of that distance.”

“That is true, presuming it is unaided.” Brenlor smiled. “I told you at the outset that six other Aspirants, soon to be Evolved, would join us. What I neglected to mention is what they would be bringing with them.” He swept his hand over Idrem’s beltcom.

A new image appeared next to the three-dimensional star map: a blocklike spacecraft, as uninspiring to the eye as the Aboriginal star names were to the ear. But the Ktor reacted as if it was an object of surpassing beauty, just as Nezdeh had known they would.

“A shift-tug!” Ulpreln almost laughed. “An old one — almost two centuries, from the look of the thermionic radiator grid — but still, that should give us ample shift range.”

“Almost twelve and a half light-years,” Brenlor confirmed. “She and the six huscarls manning her are in this system already. She will rendezvous with us in four weeks.”

Vranut folded his arms. “And how is it that a Ktor tug happens to be in such a convenient location, Brenlor?”

Brenlor seemed to approve of Vranut’s cynicism. “An excellent question. And here is the excellent answer: it was part of our Earth-related operations more than a century ago.”

Vranut’s eyebrows elevated slightly. “It helped position the Doomsday Rock?”

“No, it was not part of our own House’s covert forces. The Autarchs ordered this tug to support the Dornaani Custodians in their monitoring of the Aboriginals. It was listed as lost due to shift-drive failure.”

Nezdeh waved a hand at the fuel skimmers in their berths. “Our one irremediable operational weakness is the Arbitrage’s damaged, and primitive, refueling technologies. We will expend considerable time taking on hydrogen between shifts.”

“Yes,” Vranut countered carefully, “but we will also require less time to preaccelerate, once we have rendezvoused with our tug and its antimatter drives.”

Nezdeh nodded. “Our per-system turnaround time will shrink to approximately ten days. Technical intelligence estimates that the Slaasriithi turn around is twelve days. With that two-day advantage, we should be able to overtake our target and so, begin to both restore and avenge our Extirpated House.”

Tegrese pointed back at the red speck that was GJ 1230. “We shall restore our House by traveling there? An uninhabited system? And in pursuit of what target?”

Nezdeh chose to ignore Tegrese’s borderline insolence. “The target is a Slaasriithi shift-carrier carrying human envoys to Beta Aquilae. Destroying that ship will simultaneously derail any rapid alliance between those two polities while also creating an incident which shall provoke open war.”

Vranut’s eyes had remained on Nezdeh. “I have a question that I hope you will not consider impertinent.”

I hope so, too. “Proceed,” she said.

“So: I understand that destroying this Slaasriithi ship will damage or at least delay an alliance between two of our adversaries. But how does that facilitate the resurgence of House Perekmeres?”

Nezdeh nodded. “Your question is perceptive, not impertinent. Bluntly, we have patrons back in the House Moot who have assured us that such an event would be a political disaster for House Shethkador, which has been entrusted with managing affairs in this salient. A significant decrease in the fortunes of House Shethkador will create an opening for the restoration of House Perekmeres.

“You may have been too young at the time of our Extirpation to know just how tirelessly House Shethkador schemed to effect our downfall. They are now the dominant voice in the House Moot. But their preeminence is built upon their supposed skill at destroying enemies from within rather than upon battlefields, and for reclaiming clandestine operations which threatened to spin out of control or become politically injurious.” Such as the folly of our own Hegemons’ Doomsday Rock scheme, unfortunately. “House Shethkador’s support in the House Moot would diminish if it stumbled in its current efforts to control the war’s political backlash. Logically, it is in their interest to calm the postwar waters by lulling the other species of the Accord back into apathy and indecision. So, conversely, it is in our interest to stir those waters as violently as possible.

“Moreover, if a small band such as ourselves can successfully ruin House Shethkador’s tortuously subtle plans by striking directly against our collective foes, it not only proves the tenuousness of Shethkador’s control over this salient of operations, but will solidify support for us and our boldness. The Houses that now aid us covertly will become our overt champions. Houses that are currently undecided will decide in our favor. It will not mean the downfall of House Shethkador, but it would at least cost them their preeminence and a few sacrificial scapegoats. Conversely, the value of our Perekmeres genelines will soar, and we may be allowed to fully reconstitute our House. If not, then at least as a First Family within another House. And from there — well, we Perekmeres have never had a paucity of ambition.”

The group’s feral smiles dimmed as Idrem introduced a sobering note. “Our patrons, most of whose identities we cannot confirm, assert that it would be advantageous if the elimination of the Slaasriithi ship and the Aboriginal envoys could be carried out in such a way that the cause of their destruction was a mystery, or, better yet, appear to have been caused by each other.”

“The latter scenario is preposterous,” Vranut objected. “There is no reason for the two species to betray each other, and every reason for them to become allies. Quickly.”

Idrem nodded. “This is true. But it is in the nature of inferior species to become distracted and indecisive when confronted by unanticipated and unexplained events. While they investigate and remain at arm’s length from each other, months and years shall pass. That alone will disrupt House Shethkador’s plans and reveal both their incompetence and ill-advised preference for guile over direct action.”

Brenlor expanded the starfield display. “And so, our target is GJ 1230. You will observe that almost all the routes from Sigma Draconis to the Slaasriithi homeworld pass through it.”

Vranut’s frown had not diminished. “You seem to have known ahead of time that the Slaasriithi would invite a human envoy to their homeworld. How? Informers?”

Nezdeh smiled. “No: logic. Once the Aboriginals defeated the Arat Kur, the Slaasriithi would have been fools not to ally with them. This conjecture led us to be watchful for signs that the Slaasriithi would make just such overtures. Those signs were detected and confirmed just before Ferocious Monolith shifted to Sigma Draconis.”

Ulpreln frowned. “How could Ferocious Monolith have learned what had transpired in the Sigma Draconis system before she shifted there? Was there an Awakened on board?”

“No Reification was required to vouchsafe us this information,” Brenlor explained. “Half a day before Monolith shifted out, an Aboriginal craft shifted in near Planet Two. It was an Arat Kur prize they seized during the fleet actions in Sigma Draconis. Our servitors on board the TOCIO shift-carrier already orbiting Planet Two — the Gyananakashu—learned of the Slaasriithi invitation from that prize ship. They relayed the news to us using a trickle code protocol: single, seemingly random signals sent over the course of several hours.” He pointed to GJ 1230. “So, knowing that these envoys are making for Beta Aquilae, we can be relatively certain that they must pass through this system, or one slightly further along their path. Where we shall intercept them.”

Idrem deactivated his beltcom. “But we must do so swiftly. Our projection of their path could be in error. Accordingly, we must be ready to leapfrog ahead if we miss their ship in GJ 1230. Now, return to your stations.”

Brenlor’s tone and expression changed as soon as he was alone with Idrem and Nezdeh; he glanced at her sharply. “You should tell them you are capable of Reification. It would increase their confidence in our mission and would boost morale.”

Nezdeh shook her head. “It might also undercut their sense of urgency, of the magnitude of the challenges before us. Besides, I am only recently Awakened and have but two Catalysites remaining. No, it is best that the crew assumes we have no special assets and that we are totally alone. Because, quite frankly, we are. Should we succeed, we shall become the symbol and proof of our patrons’ arguments against the lethargy of the Older Houses. On the other hand, if we do not succeed, we shall be glad that I was never in Reified contact with our patrons and that, therefore, they do not know where to find us.”

Brenlor stared through the bridge windows at the small ruby that was V 1581. “Caution and prudence; prudence and caution. It sorely tasks a warrior to think like a fugitive.”

“It does,” Nezdeh soothed. “It surely does.”

Brenlor stared at her. “I return to my quarters. You have the con, Nezdeh.” He stalked out the hatchway.

Nezdeh glanced at Idrem, thought, between the two of us, we shall be able to manage Brenlor. But she only said, “We work well together, Idrem.”

Idrem stared at her. “It seems so, Nezdeh.”

* * *

Standing at the same viewports after completing their shift six weeks later, Idrem observed that GJ 1230 was an even smaller ruby than V 1581 had been.

However, that was merely what the eye could show. GJ 1230 was a flare star, and the variations in its luminosity were minimal compared to its sudden tsunamis of radiation. The crew sections of the Aboriginal ship were lined by meter-thick water tankage, sandwiched between a comparatively soft outer hull and an armored inner hull: proof against this star’s maximum REM spikes.

Even so, the Arbitrage remained in the shadow of one of the system’s gas giants, but not due to the hazards of radiation. Rather, it was endeavoring to avoid the dangers of detection.

Because the Slaasriithi ship had arrived at GJ 1230 ahead of them. It was already preaccelerating toward its next shift, a dimming particle trail indicating it had refueled at the same gas giant around which the Ktor were now entering a stealthy, unpowered orbit.

Brenlor glanced at Idrem. “Intercept is impossible, then?”

Idrem nodded. “If we pursued them at maximum acceleration, we would still be many light-minutes out of range when they shift again.”

Brenlor’s next question did not rise above a faint grumble. “And how soon until we can commence our refueling operations?”

“Their sensor activity is intermittent and, at this range, weak. We would be relatively safe today, completely safe tomorrow.”

“Then we send out the skimmers tomorrow.” Brenlor turned to examine the nav plot. “We will continue to presume their next shift shall be to AC+20 1463-148, and we shall follow their lead.”

Idrem nodded. “The charts for AC+20 1463-148 indicates that if we arrive in the lee of an outer gas giant, we may remain unseen, even during most of our refueling. We may then shift out ahead of them; the gas giant and the photosphere of the primary will be positioned so as to distort and obscure the signature of our preacceleration.”

“Excellent,” Brenlor decided. “That is our plan, then.”

* * *

But it did not work out that way. Early on their fifth day in the AC+20 1463-148 system, Idrem heard Nezdeh enter the bridge behind him. “You are up early,” she said. Her tone had become more familiar.

“I want to be present the moment these accursed Slaasriithi disappear from our sensors,” Idrem responded, not turning toward her. “We must commence antimatter production as soon as possible.”

Nezdeh came to stand beside him. “It has been frustrating, being delayed this way.”

Idrem managed not to scoff. Brenlor had been on the bridge when they shifted into the system. He had taken one look at the readouts and stalked off to his quarters: a blip denoting the Slaasriithi ship had loomed unexpectedly large in their sensors. Evidently, its refueling in the previous system had taken much longer than predicted. Consequently, the ship arrived at AC+20 1463-148 later and would be in a position to spot them for much longer. And that meant more delay before the Ktor could jump ahead to GJ 1236.

Brenlor had returned to the bridge, asking about the possibility of changing plans and intercepting the enemy craft in this system. Idrem was at pains to point out that the Arbie’s tanks were dry and her antimatter reserves low. And since the replenishment of those reserves required full output from all the available fusion plants, the skimmers would have to harvest even more hydrogen than usual. Brenlor had stalked back off the bridge. The ensuing five days had not been pleasant.

Nezdeh pointed at the sensors. “A power spike from the Slaasriithi.”

Idrem nodded. “Without question, they are preparing—”

The radiant energy level peaked asymptotically and then dropped to zero. The green blip disappeared.

Idrem immediately brought the fusion plants on both the Arbitrage and the tug up to full power, leaned over to summon the necessary technicians — fuel processors, flight personnel, bridge staff — to their stations. He stopped when he felt something gentle touch his arm.

Nezdeh’s hand. He looked up from it into her eyes.

“You are a great asset to this House, Idrem Perekmeres.”

“My apologies, but you forget, Nezdeh: I am twice removed from the main geneline. Technically, I am Perekmeresuum.”

“I do not need your correction, Idrem,” she said firmly, but not sternly. “Besides, that distinction is now nonsense. There are so few of our lines left, we must salvage everything we can.” She looked out into space. “In which task you are tireless. Now: get some sleep.”

“I shall. As soon as the second bridge crew reports, I will be returning to my quarters.”

“Your quarters on Lurker, or here on the Arbitrage?”

Idrem was rarely confused, but this question disoriented him. “Eh…here. Does it matter?”

Her gaze was unblinking. “It does. I shall see you. Very soon.”

She turned and left the bridge, with Idrem speechless at the center of it.

* * *

Brenlor tapped one finger against his bicep as, ten days later, the Arbitrage approached the shift point to their next destination: system GJ 1236. “All systems nominal?”

“Yes, Evolved,” answered Ayana Tagawa, whom they had trained as the second pilot for the Arbitrage. She had good basic skills and very high inherent aptitudes. “Terminal preacceleration energy state has been attained.”

Nezdeh noted the lack of affect in her voice. Brenlor thought she had become the most compliant of all the Aboriginals. Nezdeh wondered if her constrained demeanor and minimal expressions and speech might not indicate the exact opposite.

Brenlor nodded to Ulpreln. “Deactivate the space-normal helm. Tagawa, you are dismissed. Go with the guard.” One of the two dozen Optigene paramilitary clones that they had awakened from cold sleep took a step toward her, waited. She nodded to the Evolved on the bridge and exited with the slow dignity that was her wont.

“Ulpreln, is the shift-drive charged?”

“Completing charge…now.”

“Engage.”

The universe seemed to flutter unpleasantly, as though consciousness threatened to blink off, and every muscle in Nezdeh’s body was preparing to spasm…And then it was over.

“Sensors, confirm destination,” Brenlor ordered.

The Aboriginal crewman glanced at his instruments. “Stellar type: M3 dwarf, main sequence. Emission bands match target star precisely. Stellar field parallax assessment confirms we are in system GJ 1236.”

“Position?”

“Two hundred sixty-two light-seconds from the primary, absolute bearing of 167 by 14.”

“Position of nearest planet and target planet?”

“Nearest planet: small gas giant, absolute bearing 187 by 3, two hundred ninety-three light-seconds from the primary…”

So a bit behind us on the port quarter—

“…Target planet: absolute bearing 84 by 2, ninety-nine light-seconds from the primary.”

Brenlor turned to Ulpreln. “Plot course for the gas giant. Second sensor operator: contact report.”

“No proximal contacts. Several structures in orbit around the target planet. Two, possibly three, sensors in orbit around the gas giant. Very small. Unpowered.”

“Time to refuel?”

“Five days, presuming typical meteorological patterns.”

Brenlor turned from the forward view ports, drew closer to Nezdeh. “You have confidence in Idrem’s estimate?”

“That we may be able to refuel before the Slaasriithi arrive? Yes. Their shorter range compelled them to shift to another system — GJ 1232—before they were able to continue on to this one. But remember Idrem’s caveat: GJ 1232 is reserved for Slaasriithi use. It is unlikely but possible that they have a fuel depot here.”

“And so, they could be here in half the time we expect,” Brenlor concluded sourly. He moved to the hatchway and ducked under the coaming as if dodging the possibility that, once again, his quarry might unwittingly frustrate his plans.

* * *

Except the Slaasriithi arrived in much less time, Nezdeh thought forty hours later, recalling and amending her prior cautionary caveat.

Idrem was on hand, having heard the news of the Slaasriithi’s appearance near the other gas giant halfway across the system. And, she realized with a start, her gaze kept returning to Idrem’s broad back.

She wrenched her eyes away. Tender sentiments were vulnerabilities, even among those who had become intimate. Many of the Progenitors had authored axioms warning against them, and she had always heeded them. But now—

When Brenlor entered the bridge, the Aboriginals and Evolveds all straightened in unison. He looked directly at Idrem. “Do we have a reasonable chance of making a stealthy approach to the target?”

Idrem shook his head. “Even if we court the shadows of the other planets and the primary, and coast on battery power when we are not concealed, we will not reach them unobserved before they commence preacceleration.”

Brenlor stalked to the front view ports. He was silent for several moments, looking toward the primary. “Apparently they had access to a fuel depot at GJ 1232.”

Nezdeh was surprised by how calm he sounded. “Almost certainly.”

Brenlor nodded. “Can we continue our own refueling?”

“Slowly,” answered Idrem, “and only when this gas giant is between us and them.”

“So, when we have finished refueling, they will still require four to five days of further preacceleration, correct?”

“Correct.”

“And from that same moment, we too require approximately four and a half days of preacceleration also, yes?”

Idrem nodded. “Yes. So we could be shifting within hours of each other.”

Brenlor actually smiled. “Very suspenseful.” His smile widened. “I like that.”

* * *

Nezdeh glanced at the mission clock located between the two forward view ports: the Arbitrage was in the last thirty seconds of the countdown to her own transit to the system Aboriginals labeled GJ 1248.

As the bridge crew finished calling out the readiness marks, Brenlor leaned forward eagerly: “Engage!” Nezdeh’s stomach sunk as the world shimmered at the edge of annihilation and then, just as speedily, reasserted — but with a new starfield peering in at them through the view ports. “Sensors, report: proximal contacts?”

A tense second before the Aboriginal reported. “No proximal contacts.”

“Expand passive scan footprint. Report all contacts. Ulpreln, shift accuracy?”

“Within eighteen light-seconds of the target gas giant, Brenlor. We are behind it, but are situated to rise into clear line-of-sight for observation of the main planet in orbit one.”

Perfect, Nezdeh thought. Now if only—

The oddly strident Aboriginal klaxons began hooting over the senior sensor operator’s report: “Asymptotic energy spike sixteen light-seconds out from the main planet.” At the same moment, the green blip denoting the Slaasriithi shift carrier appeared in the navplot.

Nezdeh frowned. They shifted in next to the main planet? Logically, that must mean—

“They have a base at that world, or some other fueling facility,” Brenlor announced quietly. “Sensors, any orbital facilities?”

“Unable to confirm at this range.”

Brenlor thought for a moment. “Sensors, narrow sweep of target planet: inferential spectroscopic analysis of atmosphere. Also, maximum enhanced image.”

The sensor operator’s compliance was swift. “Spectroscopic analysis returns high confidence of oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere. Image confirms that the planet is gravitationally locked in a one-to-one resonance with the primary, and that it has a habitable band following the approximate terminator line.”

Brenlor leaned back, resigned. “This is precisely the kind of planet that the Slaasriithi would develop. And so, construct a fuel depot.” He shook his head. “We will not be able to surprise them.”

Ulpreln looked sideways at his commander. “But if we do not intercept them here—”

Brenlor nodded. “Yes, I know: they can reach Beta Aquilae in one shift. And so our chase is over and we have failed.”

Nezdeh glanced back over the screens which displayed the Slaasriithi’s prior path. “They might not shift directly to Beta Aquilae, though.” Seeing Brenlor’s surprised stare, she added, “I have no concrete evidence for my speculation; it is pure conjecture.”

Brenlor folded his arms. “Your speculative insights have often been correct, Nezdeh. For the good of our House, employ that skill now.”

“Very well. We know the Slaasriithi are, of all the species of the Accord, the ones most deeply involved in biological development. And we know that they have made all haste to arrive at this place. Yet, look at their progress toward the main planet”—she gestured at the navplot—“an unusually slow pace, almost casual.”

Ulpreln frowned. “And what do you infer from that?”

“That they are in no hurry to get to the fuel there because they are in no hurry to move onward. Not this time. I suspect they mean to visit the surface of this world, possibly to acclimatize the humans to their biota.”

Brenlor nodded. “By pausing here, do you think they will become vulnerable to attack?”

Nezdeh shook her head. “Probably not. But they are giving us the opportunity to refuel and shift much sooner than they do.”

“Are you suggesting that we precede them into their home system and ambush them there?”

“No. That would be utter and immediate suicide. But there is also the possibility that this world is only the first stage in their acclimatization of the Aboriginals. If it is, they might shift here, next.” She extended her finger toward the navplot, put her finger on the orange speck that denoted BD +02 4076. “Their own self-reference indicates that they have been transforming this world for at least eight hundred years. Logically, it might be an intermediary acclimatizing step between this newly shaped world”—she nodded outward toward the unseen planet in this system—“and Beta Aquilae itself. Consequently, if we cannot intercept them here, we might have an opportunity to ambush them in BD +02 4076.”

Brenlor squinted up into the glittering star map. “And if they do not detour there at all, but go on directly to Beta Aquilae?”

“Then we have lost nothing that is not already lost at this moment.”

Brenlor nodded. “Agreed. So we shall refuel and watch. And wait.”

Chapter Sixteen. IN TRANSIT GJ 1248’S INNER SYSTEM

Caine Riordan rose after checking on the reanimation progress of one of the legation’s coldslept security personnel: an Australian SAAS officer by the improbable name of Christopher Robin who had helped rescue him in Jakarta. Ben Hwang exited the cryobank module as Riordan turned back toward Karam Tsaami. “You okay on your own?”

Karam waved him out. “Yeah, yeah: I’ve got these sleeping beauties.” He glanced at the two rows of cryocell bays behind him. Most had a unit in them, all of which showed green status lights. A few were blinking, the rest were steady. One unit was dark and unoccupied. “I’ve done this more times than I can count, on colony ships. You’d just be slowing me down.”

Caine nodded, resisting the urge to stay: he’d never seen anyone other than himself going through the slow process of reanimation. Two days ago, he had helped start it, but other than the automated reswap of nonglycerinated plasma and associated cellular purging, there had been nothing to do other than taking a preanimation reading, pressing a button, watching each unit’s steady blue light become a steady green light. He suspected that a chimpanzee could be trained to do it as well as he had, possibly better. He nodded at the slightly inclined cryocells. “You know, given the number of times I’ve been in cryosleep, you’d think I’d have more skill managing it.”

Karam cocked a rueful grin at Riordan. “Being in a cryocell doesn’t teach you anything about how to operate one, Caine. Now scoot: you’re cramping my style.”

To Caine’s eyes, Karam — reading a book on his dataslate as he waited to start transferring the awakening cold sleepers to cocoonlike warming couches, IVs at the ready — didn’t seem to be doing anything he could possibly obstruct, but he nodded a farewell and gave the pilot-turned-EMT his requested privacy.

Ben Hwang had strolled halfway back to their hab mod. The featureless metal corridor was the only part of the Slaasriithi ship they’d been allowed to access during the twelve long weeks of hopping from one star system to the next. “Hard to believe we’re finally going to get out of these tin cans,” Hwang murmured.

Caine caught up with him at the entry hatch. “If I never have to travel on a shift-carrier again, that will be fine with me. But it’s given me some time to catch up.”

Hwang looked back. “On recent history?” Riordan, having slept through the years 2105 to 2118 thanks to a hypervigilant Taiwanese security operative, still had gaps in contemporary references.

Caine shrugged as they moved through the antechamber that was also an airlock. “Some history, but mostly, well, personal matters. This is the first chance I’ve had to find out what happened to my family, and to Elena and Connor, when I was out of circulation.”

Hwang nodded, did not inquire further into the matter. Which was odd, since Hwang had been the most personable of his fellow travelers on the voyage into Slaasriithi space.

The compartment beyond the airlock was configured to function as a combination living room, work room, gathering space. The outfitters had attempted to make it look homey. Instead, they had achieved a dismal parody of that effect. Reclining in an incongruously stylish easy chair, Bannor Rulaine looked up from the pulp-and-ink book he was reading. Hwang tossed a jocose question toward Riordan’s security XO: “Catching up on your military theory?”

“Catching up on my Milton,” Rulaine replied. And, with a nod at Caine, went back to his reading.

Caine crossed over toward the Special Forces major turned IRIS striker, sat and glanced at the cover of his companion’s dense tome: Milton: Collected Works. Riordan grinned: “So, passing some time with a ripping yarn?”

“Yeah. Brought it along to read on the beach.”

“Or the fiery lakes of brimstone?”

Bannor looked up. “Are you casting me as Lucifer?”

“Hell, no — to coin a phrase. How could I do that to someone who’s been my guardian angel?”

Rulaine’s lips crinkled; for him, that was a broad smile. “I’m not reading Paradise Lost, anyway.”

“Oh? Which one, then?”

“Comus.”

“So, a journey into a mysterious forest where temptation lurks. Thinking of our current travels?”

“No, thinking of how the title character reminds me of the Ktor.” Bannor settled back, a gentle, if clear, message that his interest in banter had waned beside his interest in the verse.

Caine settled back in his own chair. Ben Hwang might be the chattier and more intimate of the two men, but Bannor was calmer and well-grounded. And a walking contradiction. His dossier was as filled with combat commendations as it was with examples of how, despite his academic brilliance, he was a poor fit for conventional learning environments. Rulaine’s brief Ivy-League career began its final, precipitous decline on the last day of what had been his favorite class, an advanced Shakespeare seminar. When asked what he had done instead of showing up for the final exam, Rulaine calmly reported that he had elected to spend the time rock-climbing. Alone. When pressed to explain this choice, he responded that while he found great pleasure and value in both the substance and form of the Bard’s plays, he simply could not abide rote memorization of passages, which had been a required component of the final exam. When the academic review board suggested that perhaps he shouldn’t presume to judge the pedagogy of his august and much-published professors, Bannor shrugged and replied that while his instructors might be excellent scholars they were poor educators. After offering a further, provocative enlargement upon that opinion, his absences mounted, his GPA plummeted, and he was summarily dismissed. But Bannor’s fateful, final words had even made it into his Army dossier (although they were buried deep): “most of my professors can’t see the wider forest of meaning because they’ve become obsessed with a few mostly meaningless trees.”

Peter Wu poked his head into the common room. “O’Garran tells me that Gaspard is awake and asking questions. Imperiously.”

Bannor shut his book: an annoyed thunderclap. “Does he ask questions any other way?”

“Occasionally.” Ben’s tone was noncommittal. He rose. “Let’s go see the Great Man.”

Bannor grimaced. “I’d rather spend another few hours on the flight simulator.” He did not rise.

“C’mon, let’s go,” coaxed Caine. “It’ll be more fun than crashing during an unpowered landing. Again and again. Bannor.”

Bannor glared at Riordan. “That’s a low blow. If accurate.”

Caine smiled. Of all the distractions that he and his five conscious fellow travelers had shared during their journey, the flight simulator had been the most useful and the most frustrating. An actual training sim used by the Commonwealth space forces, it was realistic in all regards but one: feel. Karam Tsaami, an accomplished transatmospheric pilot, had tried his hand at it early on. He crashed twice, landed in a heap three times, and then finally put the delta-shaped lander on the ground with only a few nicks and scratches. “It’s bullshit,” he’d pronounced as he pushed away from the controls.

“Why? Because you crashed it?” Hwang’s tone had been almost impish.

“No, Mr. Nobel-Winner Wiseass, not because I crashed it. It’s because you can’t feel anything.”

“You mean, like the crushing impact when you stick it nose-first into the ground?” Peter Wu’s deadpan rejoinders were becoming his trademark.

Tsaami glared at the Taiwanese tunnel rat whose cool competence and valor in Jakarta had ensured that he, too, would be recruited into IRIS. “Wu, has anyone ever told you that you are one hell of a funny guy? Because if they have, they’re liars. Look: this simulator isn’t even a good approximation of instrument flying. This is like — like flying a drone. But drones have all sorts of expert systems, which uneducated idiots call ‘AI,’ to compensate for minor stability issues. This thing”—he jerked a thumb at the console—“is the worst of both worlds. You’re flying an authentically unstable platform but without the real ‘feel’ of being in it. And you’re relying on controls that are less sensitive than a drone’s.”

Caine had been curious. “Then why do they use it as a trainer?”

Karam shrugged. “Look, there’s a lot of details to flying, particularly in a lander. This sim is fine for most spaceside maneuvers. They’re a piece of cake if you can do some basic math or know how to tell the computer to do it for you. Atmospheric flight is trickier, but, unless you’re in dirty weather, it’s still pretty straightforward as long as you don’t try to pull any fancy moves. But reentry? Or fast climb to low orbit? That’s where the job gets a lot harder because that’s where things go wrong most frequently, and you don’t get a lot of warning when they do.”

“Odd, then, how all those quaint twentieth-century space capsules managed to land without computer control. Or without any controls at all.” Hwang couldn’t keep the bait-happy smile off his face.

“Yeah, real odd,” Karam retorted, “since reentry and landing was all they were designed to do. Put them in the right place, at the right angle and speed, and they’ll land. But a platform with lifting surfaces and designed to be capable of launch, landing, and flight in both space and in atmospheres? Those increased capabilities mean increased complexity.”

Bannor had put a hand on Karam’s shoulder. “Ben’s baiting you. He knows all that.”

“Yeah?” Karam sounded dubious. “He’s just annoyed that I like Wu’s food better. Sound about right to you, Pete?”

“Peter,” corrected Peter Wu.

“Yeah, yeah, sure—Pete. But Ben’s just jealous of your cooking, don’t you think, Pete?”

Wu sighed. “Yes, I’m sure that’s it.”

That had been another welcome distraction during the outbound trip: the dueling regional cuisines of China. Wu was Taiwanese. Ben Hwang had dual citizenship, China and Canada, and had grown up eating authentic Szechuan in Vancouver, before living in Canton as a student. The cooking wars between the two men had become twice-weekly events. But before long, it was obvious that while Ben Hwang was more knowledgeable in the different nuances of the many regional cuisines and use of ingredients, Peter Wu had that unquantifiable gift for knowing — just knowing—the moment when the meat had been seared enough, the leeks wilted enough, the peppers sliced finely enough. The final, almost pitiable, conferral of victory upon Wu had come when Ben Hwang had been discovered making a midnight raid on the leftovers of Peter’s cooking, even though the refrigerator was still well-stocked with his own.

Caine rose to his feet to respond, along with the others, to O’Garran’s summons.

Bannor remained seated. Kept reading. Conspicuously.

Ben motioned. “C’mon.”

“You can’t make me go.”

Caine had the sudden impression of Bannor as a quietly intransigent four-year-old. “I can make you go.”

“Yeah? How?”

“Miles O’Garran, your brother-in-arms, is in there with Gaspard. Alone. And you won’t do your part to rescue him?”

Bannor glared at Riordan, sighed, put down his book, and rose. “That wasn’t fair. Lead on.”

* * *

It took Gaspard a moment to notice that Caine and the others had entered the room.

Miles O’Garran came over quickly. “So, am I off-duty, now?”

“Uh…yes. Sure.”

O’Garran nodded tightly. “Good. I’ve got to get out of here.” He shouldered past the others, several of whom had seen him stand unflinching in the face of alien invaders almost twice his size.

“Monsieur—ah, pardon, Captain Riordan?”

Lead from the front. Caine approached Gaspard’s bed. “Yes, it’s me.”

“I am sorry I did not recognize you. My vision is…blurry. Is it possible that the cryogenic suspension has damaged my optic nerve or—?”

Riordan went closer. “Nothing to worry about, Ambassador. That is completely normal.” He knew he shouldn’t, but he added, “Didn’t you read the briefing on cryogenic suspension?”

“No. There was no time.”

— Unlikely, Caine observed silently—

“I must confess: the less I knew about what was going to happen to my body, the less I worried about being frozen as solid as an icicle.”

“Well, Ambassador, had you read the briefing materials, you would probably have worried a lot less. To begin with, you were not frozen.”

“Then why was I just removed from a cocoon originally designed to aid victims of hypothermia?”

“Because your core temperature was lowered to approximately zero point one to zero point five degrees centigrade. And to ensure against any control fluctuations, your blood plasma was replaced with an artificial surrogate containing a limited amount of glycol, genetically adapted from what Arctic cod produce when the surrounding waters drop below freezing.”

“Well, that would certainly explain the taste in my mouth.”

“Yes, that will persist for at least three or four days. Before your own blood was pumped back into you, a glycol cleanser replaced the surrogate to leach the glycol out of your cells. That takes a while, and even so, it’s not perfect. The glycol residue is what causes your blurred vision, as well as dulled sense of taste, numbness in the extremities, loss of short-term memories, and easy disorientation.”

“How long will I be so incapacitated?”

“We began your reanimation two days ago, so the symptoms will be gone the day after tomorrow. You’ll experience marginal sequelae and that lousy aftertaste for another half a week.”

Gaspard sighed. “Delightful.” He looked down his nose at the group of them, but this time, it was probably not arrogance but visual impairment which caused him to adopt what looked like a haughty posture. Actually, Caine reflected, the ambassador was behaving better than he had expected, particularly given O’Garran’s desperate dash for freedom.

The ambassador waved a hand at his other visitors. “I had expected to see you when I awoke, Captain Riordan, and of course your good self as well, Dr. Hwang. But I am not acquainted with these other gentlemen.”

Caine made the necessary introductions, made mention of Karam as Gaspard’s awakener. The ambassador took it in silently. “And with the exception of Mr. Tsaami, they are our legation’s security detachment?”

“They are, along with a few more who, like you, shipped out with us in cryogenic suspension.”

“And, how may I ask, were they selected? Unless I am much mistaken, they are all from nations of the Commonwealth bloc.”

“They are, but that was not what drove their selection. Not directly, at any rate.”

Gaspard shook his head; it looked more like a semi-conscious lolling. “That is a riddle, and I am too befuddled to solve riddles today, Captain.”

For Gaspard, that objection was positively gracious. Maybe we should stick him in a cryocell more often. “Apologies, Ambassador. The security personnel were chosen because they had prior contact with exosapients. By including them on this mission, Mr. Downing not only took them off the intelligence grid, but was assured that they had no latent xenophobic pathologies.”

“I see. However, I suspect that the short, annoying fellow who had such an aversion to my questions — and my needs”—he gestured to a soiled bedpan—“may have an aversion to humans. He did mention that it has been eighty-three days since we departed Sigma Draconis.” Gaspard stared at them unsteadily. “I should have thought you could no longer stand to be in the same room together.”

“We can’t,” Rulaine lied. “But we’re professionals. These are the sacrifices we make.”

For a moment, Gaspard seemed uncertain if he had heard Bannor correctly. Then he smiled. “And you still have a sense of humor. Excellent.”

“Yes, well, Karam doesn’t have a sense of humor,” Wu corrected. “Not anymore.”

Gaspard frowned. “Why not?”

“Because Bannor beat him at the small craft gunnery sim. Every time.”

Gaspard looked baffled. Caine felt a flash of pity, provided the missing context. “I’m sorry, Ambassador. We passed a lot of time reading, in the gym, and acquainting ourselves with xenobiology and other pertinent topics, but we also spent lot of our time in training sims.”

“Such as?”

“Flight, remote vehicle operations, nav plotting, and Bannor’s favorite, small ship gunnery.”

“I didn’t actually like it all that much,” Bannor corrected.

“Maybe not,” Hwang commented, “but it sure liked you.”

Gaspard did not attempt to keep the exasperation out of his voice. “And did you not meet with the Slaasriithi, see their ship, learn their ways?”

Caine shook his head. “No, Ambassador, your premonition about them not providing us with any new information was sadly accurate. We have seen their ambassador, Yiithrii’ah’aash, three times and then only for purely functional matters. The first time was to welcome us on board and acquaint us with the parts of the ship we were allowed to visit.”

“And how much of their ship did you see?”

Hwang’s answer was solemn. “The twenty meters of corridor that separate our hab mod from the cryobank module. They also took us to our cargo module once in an enclosed hovercraft.”

“And that is all?”

Bannor shrugged. “They allowed us to perform two routine maintenance checks on our lander and our corvette. One of the Slaasriithi went with us, observed, said nothing either time.”

“Well, I do not think much of their hospitality,” Gaspard sniffed. “And they gave you no other information?”

Caine shrugged. “They told us which systems we were in, when we were shifting, when we’d arrived, when they began acceleration, when they were going to end or start rotation. The bare minimum.”

“And did you ever ask them why they were not more forthcoming?”

I wasn’t that rude, you ass. “I invited Yiithrii’ah’aash to stay and converse. He was very polite, expressed his regrets, but insisted that words were not the right way to start our relationship. However, three days ago, he announced that we would soon be arriving at a Slaasriithi system. He chose a sparsely inhabited planet because it is the best way to begin what he called ‘the showing that leads to knowing.’”

“Mon Dieu, even their apothegms are uncongenial to finer sensibilities.”

Well, evidently Gaspard has begun his recovery to full-bore asshole…

The ambassador glanced beyond the knot of them in the doorway. “And where are the others whom you have awakened?”

Caine shook his head. “At this point, there are no others awake.”

Gaspard blinked. “You have awakened me first?”

Caine nodded. “We commenced your reanimation thirty-six hours before the others. It seemed best to brief you first, to discuss and strategize before awakening the rest of the staff.”

Gaspard’s frown was one of intense concentration. “This precaution, and personal consideration, was well-conceived, Captain. Thank you.”

“Thank you?” Well, there’s a first time for everything.

“But I will learn the details of our situation with the rest of the group.”

Caine felt the others looking at him. They had discussed the various surprises, all unpleasant, that Gaspard might spring upon them when he was reanimated, but this had not been among the expectations. “Ambassador,” Caine said slowly, “perhaps I was not clear. There are a few official conjectures, based on classified analysis, which cannot be shared with the group. Only I, you, Dr. Hwang, and Major Rulaine have sufficient clearance levels to access them.”

Gaspard seemed entirely unimpressed by this information. “Are these speculations of a biological or political nature?”

Riordan shook his head. “When dealing with first contact, the line between physical differences and social differences from human norm is often murky. Behavior follows biology the way form follows function.”

Gaspard smiled, nodded. “I keep forgetting you were a writer. An excellent point excellently presented. But I deduce that these speculations are essentially strategic in nature, and that their purpose is to inform my objectives when we come to the stage of negotiation, yes?”

“Well, yes.”

“Very well. Then I shall hear these after the unclassified briefing materials have been shared with the rest of the legation. Now, let us rouse the others.”

Chapter Seventeen. IN TRANSIT GJ 1248’S INNER SYSTEM

Two days later, once Riordan and the rest of the legation had gathered for their first collective meal in the overcrowded main room, Gaspard rose to formally announce where they were bound and why: a necessity, since many of the legation’s members had been loaded into their cryocells before leaving Earth. Expecting to be roused for either the counterattack on or policing of Sigma Draconis, they were startled to find those scenarios already outdated. Adapting to the new one took a little getting used to.

After being handed some notes by his administrative assistant Dieter, Gaspard segued into introducing Morgan Lymbery, who had originally been sent along to seek out and investigate technologies that the Arat Kur might not have risked bringing to Earth. His naval designs had made him the war’s least known and most decisive innovator, and Gaspard apparently wanted the gathering to understand that they had a genuine, if unfamiliar, celebrity in their midst.

Caine had taken a seat to the side of the impromptu head table, an unobtrusive spot from which to survey the entirety of the legation. Some predictable professional affinities were already emerging. Karam had made the acquaintance of the mission’s two other designated pilots: Qin Lijuan, a much-decorated Chinese sloop jockey who had been one of the few to survive the Second Battle of Jupiter, and a Russian veteran by the improbable name of Raskolnikov who was renowned for his ability to fly without instruments in the most adverse conditions. Another such pairing had occurred in the form of NCO bonding between ex-tunnel rat chief Miles O’Garran and towering Kiwi master sergeant Trent Howarth, who was as uniformly amiable as he was silent.

Gaspard finished eulogizing the increasingly uncomfortable Morgan Lymbery and introduced another member of the senior staff, the multiply-accomplished Dr. Melissa Sleeman.

As Gaspard began his overwrought panegyrics, Bannor found a chair next to Caine’s. SAAS Lieutenant Christopher “Tygg” Robin trailed after, eventually perching on a footrest, his knees almost as high as his chin. He looked like a naughty adult who’d been punished with a “time-out.”

“Hello, Caine,” Tygg whispered. “Glad to catch up with you finally. So why isn’t Trevor on this mission? Is he back home minding—?”

A sharp look may have shot from Bannor to Tygg. Who abruptly shut up.

Caine frowned. “Is Trevor ‘at home minding’ what?”

“Minding the store?” finished Tygg, almost smoothly. “I figured Mr. Downing might make him chief overseer of IRIS’ strike teams.”

The response was reasonable, but it still had the sound of a hasty invention to replace whatever the Aussie had planned to ask before Bannor shot him the look. “You sure that’s the question you meant to ask, Tygg?”

But Tygg’s eyes were no longer on Caine; they were focused over and past his shoulder. “Who’s that?” he muttered.

Caine turned. Gaspard was concluding Sleeman’s introduction. “That’s Melissa Sleeman. The Wasserman replacement.”

Bannor raised a quizzical eyebrow. “I didn’t read that in the dossier.”

“It’s there between the lines.” Caine dug around for the last chunks of meat in his almost empty bowl of excellent lamb madras. “When the Earthside brain trust realized they had to call Wasserman back home, they started casting around for another all-purpose scientific genius. That’s who they came up with.”

“Well, she sure is easier on the eyes,” Bannor commented quietly. “Probably more useful to a mission like this one, too.”

Caine nodded. “She might not have Wasserman’s depth of insight, but she’s less narrowly focused — a genuine broad-spectrum expert.” He noticed that Tygg was still staring at Sleeman, whose features were a dramatic blend of her Indonesian, Dutch, Canadian, and Sierra Leonian heritage. “Lieutenant Robin, you seem very impressed by Dr. Sleeman’s, er, credentials.”

Tygg nodded. He might or might not have heard what Caine had said.

Bannor pointed across the room with a flick of his eyes. “Well, there’s a familiar face.”

Caine did not recognize anyone. “Who? The big guy hunkered over his curry?”

Bannor nodded. “Yeah. Keith Macmillan. One of the Commonwealth strikers who was providing security for Downing’s classified forward ops center in Perth at the end of the war. Saw him there after we rotated out of Jakarta.”

Caine shrugged. “News to me. I have no idea about what happened after Shethkador shot me in the back with his bogus mechanical arm.”

“Didn’t Downing catch you up on what followed?”

Caine shook his head. “Nope. When they yanked me out of cold sleep in Sigma Draconis, I had one night to get myself briefed on why the Arat Kur weren’t talking to us and why we might have to slaughter them all with a plague. A day later, the Ktor showed up. No time for small talk.”

“Ah. Right.” Bannor returned his attention to his curry. And he avoided Caine’s inquisitive gaze.

Caine kept looking at him, and Bannor kept on not noticing. Now what the hell was that about? That’s more chatty than Bannor has been since, well, since I’ve known him. Why is he—?

Gaspard gestured toward Riordan. “And there, to my distant right, is Caine Riordan, now Captain Riordan, who needs no introduction. He is my deputy on this mission and in charge of security. So, if you are not feeling secure, I commend you to his services.” The weak witticism received a few equally weak laughs, but Gaspard was obviously eager to move on. Caine simply smiled, waved, and went back to his meal. No reason to extend the formalities. He’d already been in touch with half of the new team members. He’d get to the other half tomorrow.

Gaspard began to enumerate Ben Hwang’s many scientific achievements, which was probably unnecessary, since the high points of his career both before and after his Nobel prize were common knowledge.

Tygg leaned over toward Caine. “Hsst. You’ve got an admirer.”

Riordan, surprised, glanced up just in time to see Dora Veriden looking away from him, quite bored. “That’s Ms. Veriden, Gaspard’s private security.”

“More like bodyguard,” grumbled Bannor.

“And I’m certainly not getting a come-hither vibe from her, Tygg,” Riordan added quietly.

The Aussie frowned, still looking at Veriden. “Took an eyeful of you just a second ago, though.”

Yeah, if she’s memorizing my face, it’s probably because her boss has told her to bump me off if I become troublesome. “She’s been a pretty closed book, so far,” Riordan observed.

“What’s her story, then?”

Bannor put down his very empty bowl. “Trinidadian native. More or less. Has lived in almost a dozen countries, most of them former French colonies. Any degrees she has are from the school of hard knocks and the college of dirty tricks. There’s no record of her in any of our databases, and the dossier Gaspard forwarded for her has more blank spaces than details. My guess? She’s a DGSE street recruit. Probably a jack of all trades, sharp as a tack, and hard as nails. And if you want more tired colloquialisms, I charge by the word.”

Caine almost choked on his last bite of food.

Ben Hwang rose before Gaspard could attempt to summon a round of applause. “Allow me to overview what we know about the Slaasriithi. I assure you it will be brief, because we know very little. The most distinctive feature of the Slaasriithi is that they are polytaxic.”

Joe Buckley, a Chicagoan who was the legation’s combination purser, quartermaster, and logistician, squinted at the unfamiliar word. “Poly-what?”

Hwang smiled. “The Slaasriithi are a single species, but are divided into specialized subspecies distinguished by significant physiological differences. However, according to the one source we have on them, all these subspecies have consistently evolved to be cooperative parts of their larger, stable social matrix and remain universally interfertile.”

“This one source you referred to: is that the child’s primer we’ve read about?” The question came from a heavy-set young Ukrainian who was the legation’s physicist and primary assistant to Sleeman.

As Ben Hwang confirmed that this simple text was, in fact, the only speciate information the Slaasriithi had provided, Caine leaned toward Rulaine. “That physicist is a relative of one of the other members of the team that went to the Convocation, Natalia Durniak. His name’s Oleg Danysh. A second cousin.”

“You think he pulled family strings to get shipped out to Sigma Draconis?”

“I think that anything is possible.”

Hwang had resumed his overview of the Slaasriithi. “Their eyes are not arranged for binocular vision like ours. Instead, they have dispersed eyes and light sensors which evidently give them a field of vision that is almost two hundred seventy degrees in all directions from their front facing.”

“What kind of neural bandwidth does that require, I wonder?” Nasr Eid, the Egyptian computer and cryptology specialist, had clearly meant it as a rhetorical inquiry, but Hwang elected to address it.

“An excellent question, but we lack direct biological data to answer it. However, we do have some fruit and vegetable samples they sent to a reception our delegation hosted at the Convocation. Although their xenogenetic structures do not mimic our double-stranded DNA helix in the least, they are biochemically compatible, or at least benign. Additionally, we found indications that one of the vegetables can express a latent chimaerism that manifests as inverted chirality.”

Esiankiki Salunke, the legation’s arrestingly tall Indian-Kenyan linguist, blinked. “So it can mutate?”

Hwang’s assistant, Hirano Mizuki, and the mission’s ranking expert in planetology and biome studies, explained that chimaerism was distinct from mutation. Specifically, the vegetable’s exogenome was capable of evolving a variant in which the chirality of the plant’s amino acids — their right- or left-handedness — would be reversed.

“Would that threaten us?” asked Xue Heng, the team’s EMT, assistant quartermaster, and a long-service army veteran.

Ben shrugged. “Unknown, but the Slaasriithi biosphere clearly contains organisms which follow a very different genetic and chemical map than our own. That’s consistent with what we’ve discovered about much of the biota on Delta Pavonis Three. Which brings us to a point that few of you have been briefed on.

“As I’m sure you all know, it was Captain Riordan who reported that there was a species of primitive exosapients on Delta Pavonis Three at last year’s Parthenon Dialogs. What we did not know until recently was that those primitive beings and the Slaasriithi have common origins. As their ambassador Yiithrii’ah’aash put it, the Pavonians are related to the Slaasriithi the way Neanderthal is related to Cro-Magnon.”

“Just when was that learned?” asked Rena Mizrahi, the surgeon and neurology specialist from Tel Aviv.

Caine smiled ruefully. “The same day we got the invitation.”

Phillip Friel, an engineer who’d imbibed engineering theory at Trinity in Dublin before an extended tour with the EU navy, looked up from under dark bangs. “This all happened rather suddenly, it seems.” The group’s other engineer, Tina Melah, was sitting alongside him and nodding vigorously.

“It did come together suddenly,” Caine agreed. “Particularly once the Ktor showed up to retrieve their ambassador. That made the Slaasriithi extremely uneasy. So they accelerated the process of inviting us for a visit.” And here’s the part where we have to stay very, very vague; if they start asking about the Ktor role in this, one slip could pop the intel lid off the fact that the Ktor are humans, too, rather than the methane-dwelling ice worms they implied they were…

But instead, the legation’s official recorder and archivist, Qwara Betul, grumbled. “I must say I am not happy about such a hastily organized mission.”

“None of us were, but it was either go now or not within the foreseeable future,” Caine said sympathetically — just before the external airlock page double-chimed.

Riordan stood. “I think we have company.”

* * *

After remaining in the airlock for three minutes so that those humans unaccustomed to his appearance could absorb it, Ambassador Yiithrii’ah’aash entered the module. “Greetings, honored guests. I thank you for allowing me to intrude.”

Gaspard glanced at Caine as if to say, so liaise, liaison. Caine obliged: “Your arrival is a gift, not an intrusion, Yiithrii’ah’aash. And I have the pleasure of presenting the entirety of our legation to you, but most especially, our ambassador, Etienne Gaspard, Consul of the Consolidated Terran Republic.” The last phrase caused a few starts among the lately awakened team members, who had entered their cryocells when Earth’s fledgling polity was still called the World Confederation.

Gaspard approached his Slaasriithi counterpart. Who extended his many-tendrilled “hand,” adding, “If the form of my appendage troubles you, we may forego this ritual. I offer it in recognition of your traditions.”

Gaspard took the alien hand. If he felt any repugnance, he did not show it, although he withdrew his hand promptly. “Ambassador Yiithrii’ah’aash, what is your customary manner of greeting? I would assay it.”

Yiithrii’ah’aash burbled spasmodically — laughter? “You could not do so. You lack the correct pheromones. However, we are eager to share our ways with you. Accordingly, I have come to invite you to visit this system’s world tomorrow.”

Those who were enthusiastic about this news, including Caine’s five cabin-fevered fellow travelers, made sounds of approval. Those who were not so ready to debark upon an alien world were markedly silent.

Riordan made note of the most reluctant faces, asked, “How large a party should we prepare?”

The Slaasriithi’s finger-furlings and — unfurlings paused. “All may visit.”

“That is most generous, Ambassador, but our security policy prohibits full attendance. Some must remain behind with the hab module.” Not that you’d go rummaging through our drawers, but protocols are protocols.

Yiithrii’ah’aash’s frozen digits came to life in a sudden roiling motion. “Understood. However, those who do not make this first journey may not leave this module for subsequent journeys.”

“They will be restricted to this ship?”

“They will be restricted to this habitation module. To be safe in our places, you must visit them. So we cannot guarantee the safety of those who do not visit. This is the requirement for access to our worlds. We regret if it is inconvenient and we accept that some of your legation may not be able to comply.”

Yeah, but, we didn’t come out here to leave any of our experts corked up like genies in a lamp. Caine glanced at Gaspard—

— who nodded his approval.

Riordan flashed him a grateful smile—he does have his moments—and nodded at Yiithrii’ah’aash. “I am happy to say that all will go.”

“And we are happy to hear it. In preparation for your journey, we will allow free access to your two ships, as well as protected access to your cargo module, so that you may retrieve any equipment that you consider prudent. We have automated transportation waiting to carry the entirety of your legation there and back. However, be warned: it would not be safe to return there unescorted, so be sure to collect all the supplies you require before we depart.”

Hwang bowed slightly, waited until Yiithrii’ah’aash had turned his “face” toward him. “Ambassador, every time you mention entering your ship, you speak of these dangers. Do you have guards that would harm unauthorized visitors?”

The exosapient’s ostrich neck pulsed through a quick set of peristaltic ripples. “Not such as you mean. It is simply that our ship would not recognize you.”

“And so its systems would attack us?” Tygg asked.

“No, but they would not know to avoid you. Which could be just as bad. They would not desist from functions that might be injurious to bystanders. Before we reach our next stop, you will have been added to their recognition template. In your parlance, it is a biochemical database in which your genotype can be coded as being a friend.”

“Or a foe?” Caine inquired.

Yiithrii’ah’aash turned back toward him. “Yes. That, too. Now, let us go.”

Chapter Eighteen. IN TRANSIT GJ 1248’S INNER SYSTEM

Exiting the habitation module at the head of the humans, Yiithrii’ah’aash gestured toward four waiting conveyances. Unlike the small, sealed eggs that had carried Caine and his fellow conscious travelers on their earlier trip to the cargo module, these vehicles were fitted with clear canopies that emerged seamlessly from their ellipsoidal chassis.

However, “vehicles” didn’t seem an apt word for these objects. They had no protrusions or lines that betrayed the presence of maintenance housings or weld points. The only component reminiscent of human machinery was a panel behind which an operator might sit. But it was impossible to be certain of its exact function; the curved black-glass surface was inert.

It also fronted the eighth seat in the lozenge-shaped craft, into which Melissa Sleeman gleefully slid as she began inspecting the shining ebon arc. Behind her, Morgan Lymbery peered closely at the seamless juncture of the glass canopy and the vehicle’s body. His concentration was as monofocal and unblinking as that often associated with the autistic.

Tygg managed to get into the same pod-car, trailing just behind Peter Wu and Rena Mizrahi. The tall Aussie stole a furtive glance at Melissa as he slung himself into the seat next to Bannor. Unaware of his attention, she continued inspecting her novel surroundings — until the vehicles rose in unison. Gimballing their rotor-cans, they started toward the cargo mod at a reasonable rate.

“Shouldn’t we be starting to feel a loss of gravity equivalent?” wondered Tygg.

“It will take a little longer, and only if we’re moving inward toward the keel,” Caine answered.

“And we’re not,” put in Melissa, “We’re moving at about a twenty-five-degree angle to it right now.”

“How do you know?” Tygg’s voice was wonderstruck and completely incongruent emerging from one of the most blooded veterans of the recent war.

“Oh, well, I just counted the bends we’ve navigated.”

Riordan, who prided himself on being observant, wondered: bends? What bends?

The pod-bus veered into a side tunnel, sped forward a short distance and then slowed as it emerged into an open area. The high-domed space reminded Caine of a small, trackless turning yard: wide oval bulkhead doors were inset upon each of the other five sides of the hexagonal chamber. The pod-buses all landed in a row before the door opposite the tunnel mouth.

After Melissa had exited in an exuberant rush, Bannor asked, “Did anyone else see those bends she mentioned?”

“Not me,” Caine confessed.

“I didn’t see anything,” Tygg breathed, his gaze following Melissa.

“That’s because you had something in your eye,” commented Rena over her shoulder as she exited.

“Something in my eye?” Tygg repeated, baffled.

“Yes, as in Dr. Sleeman.” Wu managed not to smile.

“It’s that obvious?” Tygg asked.

Bannor rolled his eyes. Caine laughed, then the mirth suddenly inverted into sharp longing for Elena. He exited the pod-bus quickly.

* * *

Caine and the others who had been conscious for the trip helped the rest of the legation unload their scant belongings from the personal luggage antechamber of the cargo module. Finished, they gathered before the large doors into the main lading section, waiting for their hosts.

“Unloading should be easy,” commented Esiankiki Salunke, who moved gracefully in the slightly reduced gravity. “Everything weighs less.”

“Yeah,” commented Joe Buckley, “just remember that mass is unchanged. People who forget that often get squished.”

Esiankiki raised an eyebrow. “My, you are a most cheery person.”

“Comes from seeing newb cargo handlers get smashed as flat as a surfboard. Gives me a sunny outlook on this job.”

Caine heard a soft hum, turned to see another vehicle gliding to a halt in the turning yard. As soon as the craft had settled to the deck, Yiithrii’ah’aash emerged from it, followed by a pair of Slaasriithi whose matching physiognomies differed slightly from his. Their necks were shorter, thicker, more like a giraffe’s than an ostrich’s. However, their bodies and limbs were longer and thinner. Their fingers were wraithlike tapers, as were their bifurcated prehensile tails. And instead of having Yiithrii’ah’aash’s stunted, toelike protrusions, they had what appeared to be another set of full grasping tendrils in contact with the deck. Overall, whereas a quick glance at the ambassador’s odd-hipped torso produced the impression of a lean gibbon, his two associates’ bodies recalled lemurs on the edge of emaciation.

“What’s wrong with them?” Buckley muttered.

“Nothing. I think they’re part of a different taxon,” answered Ben Hwang.

Buckley stared blankly at the word “taxon.”

Well, it’s clear who doesn’t pay close attention during briefings.

Ben moved forward to greet the new arrivals. “Ambassador Yiithrii’ah’aash, I wonder if I might ask you a question about your companions: are they members of a different taxon?”

Yiithrii’ah’aash’s purr was long and continued beneath the first half of his reply. “Your perception is excellent, Doctor. They are members of a specialized subtaxon, to be exact.” He turned to one of them.

Which bobbed its head once, and spoke through a translator hanging beneath its arm. “I am a”—at which point the translator fumbled and spat random syllables. “We were induced to serve in environments where gravity is low or nonexistent. It was deemed prudent to encourage a return of certain features from our arboreal origins”—he/she/it wriggled the deck-splayed toe-fingers meaningfully—“to provide us with better grasping and maneuvering capabilities in zero-gee environments. I am incompletely informed, but I understand that in your own species, some of the same attenuations of skeleton and musculature are observed after several generations of low-gravity breeding.”

Gaspard, who had moved forward more slowly than Hwang, nodded. “Yes, this is so. However, we discourage this. It problematizes our social coherence.”

“The inducement of a useful new subform tends the group toward disharmony?” The low-gee Slaasriithi’s neck seemed to quiver faintly, like a tuning fork losing the last vibrations of a tone. “I do not understand.”

Yiithrii’ah’aash intervened, several finger-tendrils uncoiling toward Gaspard. “You will appreciate that for those of us not well acquainted with humanity, your disapproval regarding a physical alteration in your species sounds contradictory. For us, social harmony is not physically dependent upon, nor a product of, homogeneity of form. To the contrary, our harmony arises from the diverse capabilities enabled by carefully selected variations in our forms. As you shall see more completely tomorrow. Now, allow me to enable access to your supplies.”

Yiithrii’ah’aash raised his “hand,” which, Caine saw, was now sleeved in something that looked like a form-fitting glove moored by nonornamental rings and covered irregularly by studs. The ambassador’s prehensile fingers went through a set of impossible contortions, apparently bringing several of the rings and studs into rapid contact with each other. The heavy doors into the main cargo compartment clunked heavily: unlocked.

Bannor, eyes still on Yiithrii’ah’aash’s glove and rings, raised an eyebrow. “That is one strange control device.”

“Strange but effective,” Hwang murmured. “I bet they can get more combinations drummed out faster than we can with our touch screens. And it’s obviously versatile enough to interface with our own systems.” He followed Yiithrii’ah’aash into the cargo mod. Caine trailed after.

It was, on first impression, like entering the belly of an industrial age Leviathan. They stood at the threshold of a cavernous hexagonal tunnel, fifty meters long and twenty meters high. Two elevated gantries ran its length, the first one perched eight meters over the deck, the second at sixteen. Spools of zero-gee guide wires and their mooring points dotted the metal gridwork of ladders, decks, and stalls. And stacked upon or jammed against every available surface except the ground-level’s central walkway were universal lading containers of several different shapes.

Nasr Eid smiled up into the cubist cave. “A toy box for a giant infant.”

“Yeah, just don’t let any of those blocks fall on ya,” Tina Melah chuckled as she moved past with easy familiarity. “Buckley’s not the only one who’s spent some time in these death-traps.” She saw Nasr’s fearful look. “Now, now, no reason to get your jammies in a twist, Nasr. We’ve got steady rotation to keep everything where it’s already locked in place. But, if you go to zero gee, take a few hits, and have a few restraint bars break and lashings tear — well, then you’ve got some serious anvil-dodging fun on your hands!” She strode ahead into the dim bowels of the mod. Most of the others followed as motion-activated lights popped on, marking Tina’s progress down the length of the module. Caine strolled after them.

Coming around a massive cargo pod, he discovered Joe Buckley seated on a small container, his hands covering his face. Keith Macmillan was standing nearby, saw Caine approach, shrugged.

“Damn, it all looked fine at first,” Joe lamented, “but — oh, Jesus H. Christ!” Buckley groaned as if he’d been bayoneted in the gut.

“What’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong? Christ, just look at it!”

As Tygg and Oleg Danysh walked up, Caine looked around for the wrongness that so afflicted Joe. “Okay. And…what am I supposed to be seeing?”

Tygg frowned, glanced at the hard-copy lading list attached to the cargo pod, checked it against the chip-coded inventory on his palmcomp. “Oh, they’ve bollixed all this right enough. Everything they sent with us is smart-tagged, but they split up most of the individual lots between the different containers.”

Danysh grimaced. “Please, in words we all understand.”

Buckley, sitting with his head in his hands, shouted. “Everything is all mixed up. Food packed in with electronics. Medical supplies layered into survival gear. And the damned index is chock full of errors, too. It’s like some workgang and their robots just pushed every container into the first empty space they could find, going as fast as they could and the hell with anything else.”

Caine nodded. “Joe, this mission was put together in less than twenty-four hours. They pulled equipment and team members from all around the fleet. That may have something to do with it.”

“Probably has everything to do with it,” Buckley muttered. He looked up. “Captain, this is going to take days to untangle. Maybe weeks.”

“I’ll see what I can do about getting you semi-regular access, Joe.”

“But, Captain—”

“Joe, we’re here to open diplomatic relations with the Slaasriithi. Who might be the only species in the Accord willing to be our allies. And they want us all down planetside tomorrow. I don’t know what they might want after that. But here’s what I do know: those jobs come before this job.” Caine waved a hand at the mélange of mismatched bulk containers around them. “And here’s the first part of this job: you are to locate and data-tag all the defense and emergency stores.”

“Well, I can get locator numbers out of the database pretty quickly. But I can’t verify that—”

“We’ll work with whatever data you give us and I’ll provide the backs to move the gear. Get that list compiled and give it to Mr. Rulaine.”

“Yes, sir. When do you need it done?”

Caine stared at Buckley. “Five minutes ago. Any more questions?”

Buckley blinked, shook his head. “No, sir.” He turned and jogged off into the deeper recesses of the cargo mod.

Bannor had just arrived alongside Caine. “Did anyone ever mention that you have a really icy stare, sometimes?”

“Not that I can remember.”

“Well, then I’m the first. No wonder they made you an officer. What next?”

“Next we gather all the security personnel and start moving our gear to the corvette and the lander.”

Danysh started. “Are you expecting trouble, Captain?”

“No, Dr. Danysh, but if it arises, I want to have our defense and emergency gear where we need it and ready to go. It won’t do us much good otherwise.”

“Very well, I shall not intrude upon your preparations.”

Or volunteer to help, Caine thought as the physicist made himself scarce. Riordan took a few steps away from Buckley toward the comparative privacy of a corner. He glanced at Macmillan, who strolled over.

“Yes, Captain?”

“I notice from your dossier that you and I have an acquaintance in common.”

“Oh? And who would that be, sir?”

“Richard Downing.”

Keith smiled a big, congenial, shit-eating smile. “Richard Downing? Never heard of him. Or of you, Mr. Riordan. Or of your walk-about on Dee Pee Three which indirectly brought us to where we’re standing right now. No — never heard of any of that.” Macmillan’s Scottish burr was so faint as to be almost unnoticeable.

Like a ghost emerging from shadows, Bannor drew up from the other side, jerked his head toward Keith. “Told you,” he muttered at Caine.

Caine ignored him. “Mr. Macmillan, what was your mission after providing security for Spookshow Prime?”

Macmillan kept smiling but stood a little straighter. “I have no knowledge of any missions relevant to your inquiry, sir, and would not be disposed to discuss them if I had.”

Okay, so his responses were as genuine as the IRIS ID codes in his dossier. No reason to belabor the point. “I presume you had special orders embedded in the personal effects they shipped with you?”

“Yes, sir. From this same Mr. Downing I’ve never heard of.”

“And those orders are—?”

“I’m to be your eyes and ears within the group, sir.”

So, internal security. Prudent, although it was hard to imagine how even the Ktor could have managed to infiltrate the delegation with less than twenty-four hours’ notice. “Very well, Mr. Macmillan. What’s your cover role in the legation, then?”

“As far as the personnel roster goes, I’m just a warrant officer from the integrated Commonwealth task force. Jack of all trades, master of none. In terms of command structure, I’d be below Miles O’Garran, and on a par with Trent Howarth.”

Caine smiled. “Well, then”—he raised his voice—“Mr. Buckley, do you have a list yet? Mr. Macmillan is still waiting around for something heavy to carry.”

Buckley came over with his palmcomp, transferred the defense and emergency stores inventory to Caine, Macmillan, and Bannor. “I don’t envy you guys. You’ve got a lot of ground to cover.”

Bannor scanned the list. “We’re not going to get this done today.”

“No, we’re not. So let’s get going on the priority items. Bannor, you find Tygg, Wu, O’Garran, and Howarth. We’re going to need all hands for this. Macmillan, you go with Buckley and have him electronically tag all the containers so they show up on our smartmaps.” Caine started to move off.

Bannor held up his hand. “Whoa, Boss. Don’t take off until you tell us where to find you. What will you be doing?”

Caine shrugged. “Moving the boxes. Like I said, ‘all hands.’ Let’s get going.”

Chapter Nineteen. IN TRANSIT GJ 1248’S INNER SYSTEM

Caine stepped back, hands on his hips and shirt clinging to his sweaty back, as Yiithrii’ah’aash’s two helpers sealed the cargo mod once again. Bannor nodded at the dull gray door, moved past Riordan. “Let’s get a beer. Sir.” He continued on to the pod-bus.

Caine followed, discovering most of the passengers they traveled with on the previous ride. Sleeman and Lymbery had tarried to examine the quasi-biological extrusions that had extended into the module’s interior, up its sides and, after seamlessly merging with the docking sleeve, reportedly reemerged out in space, fusing into the mooring arms.

As the pod-bus began the short run back to their hab mod, Sleeman, still staring at the strange, grainy growths, leaned toward Lymbery. “That extrusion is not just a reinforcing structure. Through it, they’re extending their power and data grids to mesh with the ones in our cargo module. And I’ll bet it didn’t break any seals when it pushed out into free space; it just resumed growing in the vacuum. Probably completed the encystment of the cargo mod.”

Lymbery may have nodded.

“But what’s really interesting is that the extrusions are not homogenic. They’re comprised of diverse strands, some of which seem to be evolving into power conduits, judging from the havoc they played with my magnetometer. It looks like the parts that are now in contact with our electrical and data junctures began as probes, gel cysts that contact, sample, and assess the interface. They measure and learn to replicate its electromagnetic ‘flavor,’ so to speak. Then, about an hour later, I saw what looked like a custom-grown interface biot being budded off from the end of that bioelectric vein. By the time we come back here again, I’ll bet that biot has evolved into a power transformer which converts Slaasriithi data and electric current into Terran equivalents and vice versa.” She waited, unaware that the entirety of the pod-bus was staring at her. Tygg’s face was a mix of awe and wonder. When Lymbery failed to react to her hypotheses, Melissa leaned in closer. “Well, whaddya think, Morgan?”

Morgan Lymbery blinked as if roused from a waking dream, winced in annoyance. “All possible but excessively speculative. I remain focused on first matters.”

“What first matters?” pursued Melissa, undeterred by Lymbery’s snappish response.

“The chemical nature of the primary extrusions. I posit supramolecular liquid crystal templating or thermoplastic elastomers.”

“Elastomers?” Melissa echoed skeptically. “Natural rubber and polypropylene isn’t likely to be biogenically organic. Its softening temperature is too high and its glass transition temperature is still not rugged enough for—”

“That analysis is unrealistically constrained to current human standards. Theoretical limits and permutations point toward lower temperature production ranges and broader operational durability limits. There are—”

Melissa interrupted: Caine had the impression her focus on the topic was so intense that she wasn’t even aware she was being rude. “Yeah, but polypropylene is really nasty stuff. Even if its reliability regime could be expanded, how would an organism that’s carbon based not find that lethally toxic?”

“Analysis flawed at root. Example: hydrochloric acid in the human stomach would be lethal to the parent organism if it escaped containment. Directly analogous internal safe containment systems possible. Also, capability for polypropylene extrusion does not require the storage of propylene itself. Raw stock for combination could be stored as separate constituent parts. Conversion into propylene occurs in peripheral organ or sac, which then immediately expels the compound as extrusions.”

“And how—?”

“Storage mediums could include ethylene and other compounds, exploiting olefin metathesis to reverse the necessary—”

“Can someone translate?” Bannor grumbled. “Or get them to stop?”

Caine smiled. “Melissa, Morgan, you might want to save the rest of your debate for the ride down to the planet tomorrow. We’re home.”

“Home?” said Lymbery, rousing out of what had sounded like demonic possession by a chemistry computer. His wistful reaction to the word “home” hardened into adult resignation when he saw the entry to their hab module. Perhaps, Caine speculated, he had expected to see the quaint roofs of the small Cotswold village from which he had revolutionized human naval architecture. “Oh. Here.” Lymbery sighed, exited the pod-bus.

Caine was the last to step down from it, and was immediately set upon by Joe Buckley. “Captain,” Buckley began without the courtesy of a preamble, “I didn’t have enough time to get a full inventory of the contents of our individual survival packs.”

Caine hadn’t minded being made an officer — until now. “Uh, Joe, if you have the standard allotments of each item in each pack, and you have the total number of packs, then you just multiply and you have your inventory totals, right?”

Joe shook his head. “Except the pack allotment data is bad. Most of the kits were upgraded after the fleet left Earth. So a lot of them have outdated content descriptions. The only way to get an accurate inventory is by checking each one.”

“Can’t we get by with an estimate, instead of a precise accounting?”

Buckley looked away. “Only if you’re willing to accept a pretty wide margin of error.”

Caine couldn’t tell if he was hearing a tone of frustrated professionalism or innate anal retentiveness. “Joe, for now, take your best guess at the standard contents of the upgraded packs, and flag the result as ‘estimated.’”

Joe looked away, someplace between disappointed and sullen. “Yeah. Okay. Captain.” He started into the hab module.

“Joe?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Don’t get stubborn and do something stupid.”

Joe’s voice was now thoroughly respectful, if no less disappointed. “I won’t, sir. I understand the situation.”

Caine almost believed that he did. “Good night, Joe.”

“Good night, sir.”

Caine sealed the hatch of the hab module behind them, watched Joe slouch away toward his stateroom. Given Yiithrii’ah’aash’s warnings about the dangers of moving around the Slaasriithi ship unescorted, Riordan assured himself that no one was stubborn — or stupid — enough to take that kind of risk just to sort out some cargo. Not even Joe Buckley.

* * *

Joe Buckley was that stupid.

Unfortunately, he was also suspiciously proficient at bypassing electronics. He avoided triggering the exit alarm slaved to the inner airlock door. He anticipated and deactivated the touch-sensitive sensors lining every surface within the airlock itself, did the same with the laser tripwires crisscrossing both the inner and outer hatch coamings, and overrode the lock and disabled the alarm on the outer hatch.

All of which Caine realized in the jarring moment between being awakened by the sound of a repetitive warning tone and the approach of pounding feet. Riordan was already pulling on his duty-suit by the time Ben Hwang, still in shorts and tee shirt, opened his door and panted: “Buckley’s biomonitor in the dispensary just started coding. And he’s not in his cabin.”

Damnit! I should have set a live guard, Caine hammered at himself as he yanked on his shoes and raced past Hwang. “Where does his transponder say he is?”

“He’s off our structure; somewhere on theirs.”

Oh, for Christ’s sake—

Bannor nearly collided with Caine as he charged out of his own stateroom. “What’s up?”

“Buckley. On the Slaasriithi hull. Alone. His biomonitor has spiked.”

“Just great. I’ll assemble a team.”

Caine held Bannor’s considerable bicep a moment. “No. You keep Wu and Tygg back here with you. You’re the CO in my absence, and you keep everyone except my response team here in this module. You pulled the firearms from the security packs?”

“As we discussed on the second day.”

“Excellent. You’re to keep them hidden unless someone tries to leave. Then you use them to enforce the no-trespass rule that Buckley ignored.”

“And now you’re going to ignore it, too? Bad plan, boss.”

“Yes, a bad plan. Problem is that doing nothing could be worse. We don’t know what Buckley has done to set off his biomonitor. He could have damaged the ship, hurt a Slaasriithi. He’s our — he’s my—responsibility. I’ve got to get him back. I’ll take Miles, Trent, Keith, and…and the guy from Peking, the vet who’s an EMT?”

“That would be me,” announced Xue Heng, who came striding up the hall. “I will get a med kit, Captain.”

“Excellent. I’ll meet you at the hatch.”

“Keep your collarcom open, Caine,” Bannor called after him.

“We all will. No way to know what we’re going to run into. Also, get me an earcam. I want you to see what we’re seeing.”

“I’m on it.” Bannor peeled off into the hab mod’s combination dress-out compartment and ship’s locker.

Caine got two steps closer to the commons room when Gaspard’s voice emerged from his outsize quarters. “Captain Riordan, what has happened?” Caine told him. Gaspard nodded. “I will ready a team to follow yours just as soon as—”

“No. You will sit tight. This is a security matter and those are my orders. I’ve already spoken with Major Rulaine, who has instructions in case something happens to me. We discussed contingencies extensively on the trip out here. Now, I’ve got to go.”

Gaspard was still trying to say something, but Caine didn’t have time to listen. According to Ben’s distant, rolling updates, whatever was happening to Buckley was getting more severe. His heart rate was dangerously high and his bloodstream was awash with endorphins and a number of unknown substances.

By the time Riordan reached the commons room, Miles, Trent, and Keith were there. All had guns. Caine shook his head.

“But—” began Miles.

“No. We can’t. It’s not our ship. The Slaasriithi warned us against this. We can’t inflict any damage on them, or their ship, to save Buckley or even ourselves. Besides, guns are likely to exacerbate any misunderstandings that already exist among our hosts.” None of them looked happy as Xue arrived with a medkit and Bannor showed up with an earcam.

Caine snugged the loop of the tiny device over his ear and added, “Look, this is my screwup: it was on me to ensure that this didn’t happen. So although I asked you to report here, this is strictly a volunteer mission.”

Keith looked at the open hatch. “We’re wasting time.”

Trent smiled his big, easy smile. “After you, sir.”

Caine, feeling very much that he did not deserve the loyalty of such fine persons, led the way.

* * *

Halfway to the cargo mod, underneath the sounds of the team’s sprinting progress, Riordan heard other footfalls. He turned. Swift and stealthy, Dora Veriden was following them. Damn it, what’s she doing here? But no time to stop now: her choice, her fate.

As they rounded the second of the corridor’s slight bends, differences in speed began to stretch the group out. Trent — tall, athletic, in his twenties — was outpacing all of them. Miles and Xue, short legs pumping quickly, lost their early lead and started to drop behind, particularly Xue who, although a veteran, was not an active-duty SEAL like O’Garran. Keith had originally outpaced Caine slightly, but age and a heavy, if muscular, build were wearing him down. Meanwhile, Dora Veriden, despite a much later start, had almost caught up to Xue.

Trent looked back. Caine waved him on. The big Kiwi showed his real speed and started pulling far ahead.

“You shouldn’t be out here.” The voice from over Caine’s shoulder was guttural, strained: Dora Veriden.

Caine didn’t waste the breath on responding, saved it to try to keep pace with Trent.

Veriden uttered an annoyed grunt, and, with a surprising burst of speed, pulled ahead of Riordan and started closing on the Kiwi. Good God, is she enhanced? Does Gaspard know? Would he have brought along an illegal—?

Up ahead, Trent sprawled headlong just before the turn that led into the turning yard chamber. Veriden veered toward him — and went down an eyeblink later. They both tried to rise, but a mist seemed to be surging intermittently about them, battering them down. Damn it; what the hell—? “Are you seeing this, Ben? Any guesses?” Caine muttered into his collarcom.

No response. Not even a carrier tone. Probably jammed by the Slaasriithi ship’s on-board electronic countermeasures.

Caine veered toward the right-hand wall, the one that led into the turn, kept running while he tried to make out whatever had hit Trent and Dora. But as far as he could tell, they were unharmed, unmarked, except they were covered in what looked like cobwebs—

Webs—?

Caine glanced up. Where the walls met the ceiling, there was a dark seam, rimmed by the same substance which had extruded itself across the cargo mod. Could it also conceal something like spinnerets?

Caine hadn’t realized he’d slowed so much and was surprised when both O’Garran and Macmillan raced past him to help Trent and Dora. As they did, vapor-fine filaments jetted downward, so thick that they created the impression of fog.

Within half a second, the strands that had landed on Macmillan stiffened, and the increased resistance brought him down. However, O’Garran managed to dance out of the spray pattern — or had he? Given its density and dispersion, that seemed impossible, unless—

Had the filaments only hit O’Garran because he was close to Macmillan? No time to observe or think: those spinnerets are still spraying. If there’s a better chance to be had by rushing through while they’re busy with Macmillan—

Caine sprinted toward the corner, felt some of the filaments land on him, felt them change consistency; one moment they were as loose as a strand of hair, the next they were steel thread. But the few that hit him were just nuisances; they had evidently been aimed at Macmillan.

As Riordan and O’Garran rounded the corner, they also detected the first whiffs of an astringent, medicinal smell.

“Gas?” O’Garran panted, struggling to run. The fibers across the front of his duty suit had hardened into a mostly immobile cast.

“Probably,” gasped Caine. “The others — they alive?”

“Think so. Breathing.”

“Good.”

O’Garran started lagging as the scent of the gas rose behind them. “Go,” he said.

Riordan nodded. There was nothing else to do, although helping Joe Buckley — whose skills evidently included those possessed by accomplished felons — had now become a rather ironic objective.

As Caine rounded the final corner into the turning yard, he heard a thump well behind him; O’Garran had gone down. Pushing back against a surge of vomit, Riordan sprinted across the chamber’s circular expanse, came up short when he confronted the cargo mod’s still-open doors. The fibrous extrusions now resembled a mahogany lava flow that ran from the bay of the Slaasriithi vessel into the cargo mod as one seamless mass. And from beyond that resinous cavern mouth, Riordan heard a single, child-high shriek.

Riordan’s plunge through the doorway was reflexive, but not incautious. Uncertain of what he’d find, he went in low and straight toward cover. But there was no fight in progress, no torture, not even any Slaasriithi or intruders to be seen. Just Joe Buckley’s distant torso, squirming irregularly beyond one of the motion-activated lights, halfway along the length of the cargo mod.

Caine jumped up, sprinted those twenty yards, scanning for tools as he went, preparing to help Buckley however he could — but stopped when he saw Joe’s predicament. And thought: what the hell is that? — And what the hell can I do?

Vac-suited Joe Buckley seemed to be pinned to the wall next to one of the cargo mod’s primary power mains. But in the next moment, Caine realized that the extrusions which had snaked down the wall toward the mains were holding Joe up. But no, that wasn’t quite right, either—

They had transfixed Joe, and were growing, even now, toward the cargo mod’s power mains, burrowing through his body to do so. In the one paralyzed second that it took for Riordan to understand what he was seeing, more of Buckley’s abdomen sagged. The hole in it widened, the extrusions leaking a slow but constant secretion that was, from the smell of it, highly alkaline. Joe seemed to rouse out of a stupor, yelled incoherently, sobbed back into quasi-consciousness.

Caine looked around: a power-saw. Hand-sized, the kind used to cut off locks or through simple sheet steel. He grabbed it off the deck, jumped next to Buckley to get to the power mains — and discovered what had probably initiated the horrific scenario.

The power mains were covered by a luminescent polyp that emerged from the extrusion burrowing through Buckley’s body. Another such polyp, lifeless and dull, lay on the deck, evidently torn aside by Buckley when he attempted to connect the saw to the mains and scorched his hands trying. Beyond the burnt meat smell, the air was thick with the medicinal tang of the gas from the corridor, but it was stale, had probably been used at the outset. Apparently, the gas had also kept Joe senseless as the extrusion burrowed through his body in its unswerving purpose: to get to the power mains.

Caine spent one moment looking at the situation, waiting for a solution — any solution — to come to him. But the only course of action that he could think of was the same that would have occurred to his Cro-Magnon ancestors. Without attempting to plug it in, and using his left hand to cover his nose and mouth, Riordan slammed the hand saw down across the conductive polyp attached to the mains.

A blast of heat and energy sent him backwards. The extrusion transfixing Buckley, which had seemed as solid as a stalagmite a moment ago, writhed. Buckley’s eyes opened into panic and pain as the spasms of the extrusion widened the wound, his weight slamming back and forth against the dark rootlike protrusion upon which he was impaled. He shrieked. Blood spattered. A fresh wave of the astringent smell preceded a glistening rush of the corrosive fluid which had already eaten a hole through Buckley’s torso. The edges of that gore-rimmed gap widened more rapidly. Fumes arose as tissue and fluids bubbled.

As Caine rose, groggy but resolved to try again, Joe’s screams became more desperate, his writhing wilder — which brought him fractionally closer to the mains. Apparently, the once-luminous fluid that splattered on him when he’d smashed the first polyp remained a powerful conductor. Actinic, blue-white charges danced out of the mains’ sockets and along vaporous trails leading to Buckley’s chest and shoulders. The smell of charring flesh increased along with the of the gas. Caine staggered forward, fell to his knees. The scene began doubling, the sounds blurry and indistinct as Buckley’s desperate struggles transformed into spasmodic convulsions—

Chapter Twenty. IN ORBIT GJ 1248 ONE (“ADUMBRATUS”)

Caine started awake. He tried to get off his back, get to Buckley—

Hands he hadn’t noticed were holding him down. And he wasn’t in the cargo mod anymore.

“That was fast,” commented Bannor’s voice, just behind him.

“The effects of the gas are immediately dispelled by the antidote,” Yiithrii’ah’aash’s voice answered.

Riordan tried to rise up on his elbows. “Buckley is—”

Rena Mizrahi’s face was over his; she was wielding a diagnostic stylus. A light stabbed into his left eye briefly and went away. “Let’s worry about you for now, Captain. Contraction and dilation already normal. Vitals normal.”

“As I assured you,” Yiithrii’ah’aash said. His tone was not impatient or even disappointed; it was sad.

“Thank you, Doctor. And you as well, Ambassador.” Gaspard’s voice was more distant. Caine’s voluntary nerve functions finally began catching up with the restoration of his senses and involuntary reflexes; he rolled his head to the right, saw Gaspard standing in the doorway to the dispensary. Closer, almost out of his field of view at the head of the bed, were the edges of one human torso and one alien torso: Bannor and Yiithrii’ah’aash, respectively. Now realizing that Joe Buckley would have been found and assisted long before he was, Riordan simply asked: “Buckley?”

Bannor moved into Caine’s field of vision, shook his head.

Riordan had expected that answer, but it felt like a physical blow to his stomach, even so. He swallowed. “Ambassador Yiithrii’ah’aash, I take full responsibility for—”

Gaspard interrupted. “Captain, I have already reviewed the events with Ambassador Yiithrii’ah’aash, whose surveillance systems recorded everything. He knows you are blameless.”

Blameless? Bullshit: my man, my fault. “Ambassador, with all due respect—”

“Caine Riordan.” Somehow, Yiithrii’ah’aash’s interruption didn’t feel like one; it sounded like a gentle but firm request for attention. “I am aware of the scope of your duties. I am also aware that no being may fully anticipate the actions of another, particularly one so briefly and incompletely known to you as Mr. Buckley.”

“I—”

“Please allow me one further statement. Mr. Gaspard has also acquainted me with the contents of Mr. Buckley’s dossier. There is nothing within it to suggest that he might behave in such a way. Furthermore, none of his prior actions or statements validated taking any abnormal precautions. Indeed, your newly awakened legation members might have construed such precautions as signifying that you distrusted us, or them, or both. In short, you made the best decision, given all the variables and available data.”

“Yes, but it was the wrong decision, nonetheless,” Riordan insisted. “I am the head of security. Even if you — dubiously — insist that I didn’t make any bad decisions, it’s still my command. That makes it my responsibility, and my fault.” Caine saw a slight wrinkle quirk the corner of Bannor’s mouth: a rueful smile which translated as, they’re not going to understand. Ever.

Yiithrii’ah’aash’s tendril fingers straightened into columns, were still. “I am only slightly familiar with this human predilection for elevating an individual’s level of responsibility above their ability to assure desired outcomes. I note that it is a particularly strong tradition in your human militaries. Am I correct?”

Before Riordan could fashion a reply, Gaspard rolled his eyes and sighed. “You are quite correct, Ambassador. And you are not the only sentient being that finds these superhuman expectations absurd.”

Two of Yiithrii’ah’aash’s tendrils rose: a motion calling for a pause. “I am not suggesting it is absurd. Indeed, given the relationship between your species’ sociology and expressions of authority in crises, it is probably inevitable.”

Bannor raised an eyebrow. “Ambassador, would you care to explain what you mean?”

“Certainly. Most simply, it is inarguable that there are events for which no individual has sufficient agency to affect the outcome. Yet, those members of your species who are assigned to confront extreme challenges are, by rituals of ranks and oaths, made ‘accountable’ for just such outcomes. This is inherently illogical.”

“Precisely,” Gaspard agreed.

“However,” Yiithrii’ah’aash continued, “this absolute accountability is required in order to overcome your species’ powerful self-preservation instinct. Only because there is no acceptable excuse for failure will an individual court certain death in the discharge of a crucial duty.”

Caine swung his legs over the side of the bed. “And the Slaasriithi have no such instinct toward self-preservation?”

“We do not have it in your measure.”

“And why is that?”

Yiithrii’ah’aash emitted a short, faint purr. “The answer to that is best seen, not explained.”

Well, that’s certainly a convenient all-purpose deferral. “I welcome the opportunity to see and understand. In the meantime, I assure you that there will be no further unauthorized human presences on your ship. This module’s access airlock will be secure-coded, locked, and guarded at all times.” He glanced up at Bannor. “I suspect it already is.” Rulaine’s nod was as faint as his smile. “However, I doubt those precautions will be as effective as the legation’s detailed knowledge of just how Buckley paid for his trespass.”

“Caine Riordan, Mr. Buckley’s death was not a consequence of his trespass. Our ship’s security systems only immobilize intruders, as demonstrated with the others in your own group. Mr. Buckley’s death was simply the result of blocking our power interface extrusion. As I warned you, our systems have not yet been coded to recognize humans as a higher life-form.”

Rachel leaned back sharply. “Then what did ‘your systems’ think Buckley was?”

“They identified him as a collection of biological resources that also happened to be obstructing them. So they harvested needful compounds from his body as they pushed through it to their objective. They regrettably achieved both all too completely.”

Caine glanced at Gaspard. “Has a burial detail been assembled?”

Gaspard became pale. “None is required.”

Damn. “Ambassador Yiithrii’ah’aash, why didn’t your anti-trespass systems stop Buckley? Or me, or Chief O’Garran?”

The Slaasriithi’s fingers unfurled into what looked like an appeal. “We presumed that no intruder interested in stealth would slow or encumber themselves by wearing a vacuum suit. However, because Mr. Buckley did, and because it was sealed, our trespass monitors did not detect a bioform. Consequently, their coding instructed them to act as if the intrusion was being carried out by a mechanism. They attempted to disable Mr. Buckley with localized electromagnetic pulses. They were, naturally, ineffective.”

Bannor folded his arms. “Naturally.” And he didn’t say what Riordan presumed he was thinking: you Slaasriithi have pretty lousy autonomous security systems if they can’t figure out and handle something as simple as an intruder in a vac suit.

Yiithrii’ah’aash’s tendrils writhed without apparent pattern. “I am puzzled, however, by Mr. Buckley’s reason for risking unauthorized entry to our ship. I have heard several of your legation speculate that he may have been motivated by larceny. However, to the extent I understand that concept at all, I cannot see what he hoped to gain. He is extremely distant from any markets where he might liquidate stolen property.”

Caine stood, found his balance unimpaired. “Given how Joe tried to press me for increased access to the cargo module, I suspect he meant to retrieve something incriminating that was mixed in with our shared gear, something he couldn’t get to without raising suspicion.”

Gaspard nodded. “That would explain his power-saw, also. If Buckley wished to remove some object that would bring his checkered past to light, then it would not only be worth the risk of trespassing, but his use of the saw. Once the incriminating object was gone, we might still suspect him of the trespass, but would lack definitive proof.”

“As likely an explanation as any other,” Bannor agreed.

But Riordan’s focus remained on the one failure of the Slaasriithi security system that remained unexplained. “Yiithrii’ah’aash, you still haven’t explained how Chief O’Garran and I slipped through.”

Yiithrii’ah’aash emitted more of a hum than a purr: perhaps he was hoping we wouldn’t return to this topic? “You and Chief O’Garran have been aboard for many weeks. And we met several times. During that time, you were pheromonally marked.” His head angled slightly toward Bannor. “As were you, Major, along with the rest of the conscious travelers. Indeed, your party would not have been gassed at all, had the sensors not detected a weapon.”

Caine shook his head. “That’s not possible. None of my personnel were armed.”

“That is true. But you and your personnel were not alone in responding.”

Gaspard’s pallor became a flush. “Ms. Veriden. Without doubt.”

Yiithrii’ah’aash’s ostrich neck bobbed. “As you say. Usually, our defenses would only physically immobilize intruders. But if a weapon is detected, it activates suppressive gas biots.”

Well, that explains their reaction to Buckley’s handsaw, too. “Ambassador, I offer my personal apologies that a human brought a weapon on board your ship. I am—”

Gaspard shook his head sharply. “No, Captain; this is not your responsibility, even by the letter of the often-absurd laws of military accountability. The culpability is mine.” He turned to Yiithrii’ah’aash. “Ms. Veriden is not part of the legation’s security team; she is my personal, er, assistant. As such, I am to answer for her indiscretions.”

The Slaasriithi’s small head inclined slightly. “We thank both of you gentlemen for your forthrightness. It is, as your saying has it, the silver lining to this dark event. However, your protestations of responsibility are as unnecessary as they are illogical. My concern is solely with ensuring that there are no recurrences.” He shifted slightly. “I am also constrained to point out that we must now descend as planned to the planet below us.”

Caine, Bannor, and Gaspard exchanged baffled glances. “We have to leave right now?” Caine asked.

“Yes.”

“With all due respect for our itinerary, Ambassador, we should first ensure that there are no other — well, loose cannons — in our legation.”

“I do not know what unsecured artillery pieces have to do with our current situation, but we may not delay. Various activities have been scheduled to coincide with your visit. But, more importantly, we cannot loiter because we dare not presume that this region of space is secure, even though it is well within our borders. Experience has shown us that all borders are porous. The Arat Kur have occasionally proven it to us in this very system.”

“But the Arat Kur are defeated. Word must have reached even their most far-flung units, by now.”

“Agreed. I invoke the Arat Kur only as an example.” Yiithrii’ah’aash’s ostrich neck seemed to shorten slightly. “The Ktor are much more advanced than the Arat Kur, and if they have the ability to enter Arat Kur space as a surprise to all other powers, including the Dornaani, then our safety is not absolute until we reach Beta Aquilae.”

Gaspard had blanched again. “Do you really think we could be pursued by the Ktor? Here?”

“I think that is extremely unlikely. I also think that very few things in this universe are impossible. Let us make haste to the planet.”

Chapter Twenty-One. BIOBAND’S VALLAND GJ 1248 ONE (“ADUMBRATUS”)

Karam Tsaami was in the pilot’s seat of the delta-shaped lander and was not at all happy. He hadn’t been since the slightly smaller, but more versatile and rugged Euro model had been stricken from the legation’s inventory just hours before their departure from Sigma Draconis Two. Two small maintenance glitches and subpar thrust measurements resulted in the mission planners going to the second vehicle on the roster. The TOCIO-manufactured Embra-Mitsu lander was capacious, but also more lightly built, and if push came to shove, simply didn’t have the thrust-to-mass ratio of the EU model, despite its responsiveness.

Karam’s displeasure was increased when the Slaasriithi prohibited the legation’s Wolfe-class corvette from serving as the lander, citing its paucity of passenger couches. Karam had argued the milspec advantages of the craft’s speed, agility, toughness, and systems redundancy. Yiithrii’ah’aash had patiently heard him out and then explained that the humans had to land in their own craft, and only one, if possible. So the Embra-Mitsu would suffice. The career pilot had muttered imprecations and suspicions about the Slaasriithi just finding a convenient excuse to keep them from landing in a warship. Caine observed that this might be true, but given the nasty surprise that Joe Buckley had dealt to everyone’s easy confidence in the safety of the mission, Yiithrii’ah’aash certainly had the right to err to the side of caution. Tsaami’s dark grumblings did not cease, but they did subside.

Karam put his hand on the hard-dock release lever, and called out, “I need a vocal confirm that you are strapped in. All the green lights on my board are not good enough.”

A confirming chorus came from the passenger compartment. The three other persons in the cockpit — copilot Qin Lijuan, planetologist Hirano Mizuki, and Riordan, whose ostensible job was security overwatch of flight operations — murmured their own assent.

Karam pulled the handle; he preferred manual controls for some functions. “Okay, everyone, we’ve got some odd descent telemetry on this ride, so be prepared for a few sharper-than-average turns. Here we go.” He puffed the attitude control thrusters to put the nose down and in line with the trajectory guidons and waypoint boxes painted on his HUD visor. The world beneath them rose into view — and revealed itself to be a world like no human had ever seen before.

* * *

Riordan stared at the faintly ovate planet. Scientists and planetologists had speculated that such worlds would — indeed, must — exist. Its primary, a red dwarf labeled GJ 1248, was just thirty-nine million kilometers away. Consequently, the planet was not only face-locked to the star, but had been structurally deformed by it.

Qin Lijuan’s eyes were wide. “Is it slightly egg-shaped?”

Hirano Mizuki nodded. “The inner pole, the part of the planet always closest to the star, was constantly stretched in that direction throughout its formation.”

“Which is one of the two things that makes landing here so challenging.” Karam was fussing with his instruments, particularly his navigational sensors. “I’ve never had to put down on a world which isn’t functionally a sphere. Orbit tracks are messed up. The relationship between altitude and gravity are skewed.”

Qin Lijuan was studying the instruments carefully. “Because in a sphere, a constant orbital altitude means constant distance from the center of gravity.”

“Right. But here, not so much.”

“Would a polar orbit be better? If you remain consistently over the meridian, you will be able to follow a roughly circular orbit with roughly consistent gravity.”

Karam nodded. “That’s what I’m shooting for. But it’s easier said than done, lacking a full planetary survey and nav charts. The Slaasriithi relayed the relevant astrophysical data, but the software on this barge doesn’t have a preset template for a nonspherical planet.”

Riordan glanced at Karam. “So you’re running the nav numbers in real time?”

“No other way, Captain. Couldn’t run a simulation since I didn’t have the time to write a custom subroutine. So we’ll still need some adjustments on the way in. You ready to help with that, Lieutenant Qin?”

Her hands rested confidently, lightly upon the controls. Qin Lijuan didn’t even bother to nod; she simply glanced at him.

Karam rolled the shuttle, boosted so that its approach to the planet became oblique. Riordan watched as GJ 1248 One’s sun-blasted surface swam across to the right-hand side of the cockpit windows, sinking as it went.

Qin’s left eyebrow raised. “We’re going down there? Without hard suits?”

Hirano Mizuki’s answering smile was almost invisible. “We won’t need anything more than filter masks.”

Qin’s other eyebrow rose to join the first. “How is that possible?” She tracked a raging, twister-pocked dust storm as it scoured its way across the ochre flatlands over which they were passing. “The temperature down there must be over two hundred degrees centigrade.”

Hirano nodded. “More, in places.”

Riordan glimpsed the terminator, the line marking the border where the perpetually sun-scorched side of the planet gave way to its perpetually lightless hemisphere, and noted that it was peculiarly smudged — not at all like the hard, crisp demarcation that he had seen while orbiting comparably featureless moons and planets. “Is that a lifezone lying along the terminator?”

Karam nodded. “Yeah. Yiithrii’ah’aash briefed me on this for a grand total of two minutes while you were sleeping off the gas. The Slaasriithi call this kind of world a meridiate. A face-locked world that is large enough to retain both an atmosphere and some water can develop what they call a bioband, which follows the terminator’s meridian.”

The bioband was only a few hundred kilometers wide, and the sunward margin of it still showed no sign of water or plant life. But whereas the far wastes of the sunward face were flat and uniform in both color and reflectivity, the margins where it abutted the bioband shaded into darker patches. There were also more geological irregularities along that fringe. Glacial deformations resembling dried finger lakes, hillocks and successive ridgelines paralleled the edge of the zone that human planetologists that speculatively labeled the “life-belt.” The ridges became higher and more frequent as they receded toward the more shadowed center of the zone.

“Terminal moraines,” Hirano commented.

Caine nodded, watching them accumulate and stacking into a washboard collection of faint, meridian-following ribs. “The limits of a glacial advance?”

Hirano nodded. “Yes. We can’t see the darkside glacier yet — most of it will be well-shadowed — but it won’t be a perfectly stable formation. Stellar flares and libration will change the temperatures in the bioband. With those changes will come glacial advances and retreats. And every time the glacier retreats, it will leave behind one of those.” She gestured down at one of the ridges paralleling the further, darker reaches of the bioband.

Riordan watched Karam align the shuttle to follow the same meridian-riding track of the terminal moraine. “Assuming that there is any periodicity to temperature change, there should be some spot where the glacier is most likely to halt, right?”

“Yes,” Hirano confirmed with an eager nod. “That moraine should be the highest, being a compound of multiple terminal deposits. It would logically function as a kind of sunside ‘wall,’ according to some of the planetological predictions.”

Karam glanced at Hirano Mizuki. “I’m not unfamiliar with planetology, given my job, but I’ve never even heard of speculations about a world like this — uh, ‘meridiate.’”

“Such work is rare,” Hirano admitted in a small voice.

Caine smiled. “You wouldn’t happen to be one of those rare researchers, would you, Mizuki?”

Her answering smile was also small. “I have shared my opinions in one or two papers.”

Karam snorted, but it was not a derisive sound. “Figures.” He boosted the craft slightly. “Pretty lively air here where the hotside drafts are zooming across to equalize the subzero soup on the dark side. We’ve just started biting into the atmosphere and I can already feel the buffeting.”

“You can?”

“Sure,” Karam answered as Qin Lijuan nodded her confirmation.

“I can’t,” Hirano confessed.

“That’s because it’s not your job,” Karam observed. “And that’s why we’re landing this barge in a hands-on mode. We’re depending as much on the feel of this bird and the nav-sensor readings as we are on the avionics and the flight computer.” Karam put his palm on the manual throttle and pushed the thrust higher, along with the shuttle’s nose.

Riordan felt the increased, thready vibration through his seat. “Isn’t this when we would normally be backing off the thrusters?”

Karam didn’t turn away from his instruments, but Caine could see a smile quirk the rearmost corner of his mouth. “So, you have been paying attention during the sims.”

“Weeks of running them again and again will even help a newb like me,” Riordan replied.

Karam nodded tightly as the shuttle jounced, settled, seemed to float upward on a giant palm before dropping down sharply. “To answer your question: yeah, at this point, we’d normally be backing off the thrust, letting the belly soak up the energy of our descent as we serpentine in to dump velocity. But here, that protocol would get us killed. We’ve got to get through the turbulence of the air masses moving from the brightside to the darkside. We need powered flight for that. And our glide path, even from this altitude, is fundamentally perpendicular to the plane of the equator.”

“Because we are making a longitudinal, not latitudinal, approach?”

“Correct, Captain,” Qin Lijuan answered, who was now in control of the shuttle as Karam plotted telemetry changes to compensate for new meteorological data. “However, it will not be convenient to answer further questions at this time.”

Riordan reflected that he really didn’t have any more flight-related questions, now that the life-sustaining sections of the bioband were in plain view. It was a meandering valley cut with swathes of mauve, maroon, teal and aqua foliage, and they were slowly angling down into it from the hotside.

The thermals came in layers, the faint shuddering of the calm belts alternating with teeth-rattling surges from the more super-heated currents. At times, Karam and Lijuan had to fight to keep the shuttle from rolling by nosing slightly into the drafts, being pushed sideways as they maintained dynamic equilibrium against the lateral forces until they could get underneath each successive current.

After almost a quarter hour of jostling alongside and against the cyclonic winds rushing toward the distant glacial wall of the darkside, Lijuan was finally able to bring the nose back down. The shuttle slipped beneath the level of the terminal moraine which rose up like a long, high ridgeline interspersed with hillocks. As the craft did so, the orange-red light coming in the cockpit windows dimmed, the shielding ridge blocking the line of sight to the sun. The wide valley beneath them swum into sharper focus with the loss of the glare: patches of spongy aquamarine plant canopy snugged against the backside of the ridge. Swards of dusky maroon and vibrant violet flora reached out from its foot, shot through with occasion streaks and patches of white-washed ultramarine and teal. The sharply separated colors chased up and down faint bowl-shaped depressions, in and out of faint hollows where thin water courses glimmered in the indirect lighting.

“Damn,” muttered Karam, “I’ve been to at least half the green worlds out beyond Epsilon Indi. Half of the brown ones, too. But this—”

“Different?” Caine asked.

“And then some.”

Hirano, her nose pushed up against the cockpit glass, nodded in eager agreement.

Lijuan, who had transitioned back to dynamic controls, initiated the landing sequence. Two of the thrusters slowly rotated into a vertical attitude as the landing gear began groaning out of their wheel-wells.

“How long, Lieutenant?” Riordan asked.

“Four minutes, sir.”

“Then it’s time to have the rest of the mission break out the filter masks. We’ve got a planet to visit.”

* * *

With the entirety of the legation sheltering under the still-warm belly of the lander, Gaspard approached Caine and flipped open the speaking port beneath the filters of his mask. “Your security personnel seem pensive, Captain. Have you passed them any warnings of which I should be aware?”

Riordan squinted into the strangely diffuse light, saw that Yiithrii’ah’aash had now debarked from his own craft. Two significantly shorter but stockier Slaasriithi were approaching from the edge of the landing pad, carrying what appeared to be boxes. Caine shook his head. “No, I haven’t issued any special orders, Ambassador. My personnel just don’t like being tasked to protect against threats if they don’t have weapons.”

“And you have similar feelings?”

Riordan shrugged. “After what happened with Buckley, I can hardly blame our hosts for not allowing us to carry devices which could turn a simple misunderstanding into a massacre. Besides, I think the last thing the Slaasriithi want to do is to harm us.”

“I find it refreshing, if surprising, that you agree with our hosts, and with me, in this matter.”

“I do,” affirmed Caine, “but that’s not the same thing as saying that I don’t understand how my security team feels or that I don’t share their sentiments. I simply concur that, in this place and at this time, it’s best for us to leave our weapons behind. Besides, I don’t think Yiithrii’ah’aash was going to brook any debate on the topic.”

Gaspard’s voice conveyed what sounded like a rueful smile. “On that point we are in complete agreement, my good Riordan.”

As Yiithrii’ah’aash and his attendants drew close, the ambassador unfurled several long fingers into an undulating greeting.

Tygg’s sotto voce comment rose up from the rear of the ragged cluster of humans. “We wave hands; they wave fingers.”

That prompted a few chuckles and giggles, one of which came from Melissa Sleeman. Which means that Tygg is wearing a big, stupid smile right now. As Riordan raised a hand to return Yiithrii’ah’aash’s greeting, he stole a quick look at the ambassador’s new companions. These Slaasriithi were not only smaller and stocky, but had lightly furred, symmetrical protrusions where a hominid’s short ribs would be located. Yiithrii’ah’aash noted Caine’s curious stare. “They are not neoplasms, as you might conjecture if you relied upon visual parallels from your own physiology.”

Rena Mizrahi answered before Riordan could formulate an adequate response. “I can see that: the protrusions are too regular, both in their own shape, and in their bilateral placement.” She pulled in a deep, air-testing breath as she continued to assess the two protrusions on each of the new Slaasriithi. “The air here is somewhat thin. Are those bulges, uh, symbiotic — living — air compressors?”

Yiithrii’ah’aash’s purr rose in a surprised surge. “You are quite correct, Doctor. We rarely induce special subtaxae to caretake xenobiomes during their transitional phases. Rather, we provide the most suitable extant subtaxae with symbiots that allow them to adjust to the local environment without resorting to intrusive devices.” He paused, his sensor-cluster head swiveling more directly toward Riordan, who realized he had blinked several times during Yiithrii’ah’aash’s explanation. “You are perplexed, Caine Riordan?”

“No,” Caine confessed, “but your explanation left me with about a dozen questions. And I can’t figure out where to begin.”

Yiithrii’ah’aash’s purr modulated into a subaudial hum. “We will have time for all those questions after today. By then, I expect some of those queries will have been answered, others will have changed, and many, many more will have arisen. For now, let us walk into this world we call — well, in the dead language you use for attaching scientific classifications to objects, it would roughly translate as Adumbratus. But before our journey, we ask that you spray yourself with the contents of these canisters.”

Responding without any overt summons, Yiithrii’ah’aash’s two companions brought forth the boxes that actually proved to be semi-rigid angular bags. They dispensed the canisters.

“What does this do?” asked Morgan Lymbery, squinting at the container suspiciously. It appeared to be made of a very fine-grained version of the same material which comprised the extrusions that secured their cargo-mod — and that had burrowed straight through Joe Buckley.

Yiithrii’ah’aash was already dousing himself with a mist from one of the containers. “The contents are scent markers, adapted from both our own pheromones and local spores. The latter ensures that the local biota will find you wholly uninteresting, and the former ensures that our own transplanted biota will be affined to you.”

“Affined?” asked Tina Melah. “Is that still a word?”

“Was it ever?” echoed Trent Howarth.

“Actually,” answered Esiankiki, “it is the past-tense verb form of ‘to have affinity for.’” She turned to Yiithrii’ah’aash. “So your own flora and fauna will identify us as living beings who are nonthreatening?”

“That is a most adequate summation, Ms. Salunke.”

“How easily does it come off?” asked Dora Veriden darkly from the back of the group.

“The markers are not readily soluble. They do not simply remain on your skin, but will, by osmosis, vest in the outermost cells of your epidermis. This contact with your own fluids enhances their duration and eliminates the risk of dissolution.”

“That’s not what I was concerned about,” Veriden muttered.

As the group applied the spray, Yiithrii’ah’aash continued. “We will be near hard shelter at all times. You must follow me, or our guides, to that cover quickly in the event of a solar flare. This is a low-activity period for GJ 1248, but no star has fully predictable cycles and red dwarfs have the greatest proclivity to deviate from their own patterns.

“Lastly, while there are few bioforms on this planet that would intentionally threaten you, no environment is without risks. This is why you are wearing filter masks in addition to the scent markers. Various airborne spores are present here, and since no humans have visited this environment before, we cannot be certain of their effect upon your respiratory tract. However, we have been able to ascertain that, if you keep your duty-suits sealed and your masks on, you need fear no exposure hazards for several weeks, at least. Now, please follow me.”

As the legation trailed Yiithrii’ah’aash across the tarmac, Riordan realized that the surface was comprised of neither macadam nor tar, but, from the look of it, was some kind of finely threaded plant that had hardened into a chitinous mass.

Bannor drew alongside Riordan. “Moment of your time?”

“Take as many as you’d like.”

The landing pad underfoot smoothed into what seemed like a vast plastic expanse. “After what happened with Buckley, I think we have to assume that some of our team members may be, well, infiltrated.”

Caine made sure that neither his face nor his gait changed. “Hard to see how. No one knew this trip was coming, and Downing, Sukhinin, and Rinehart reviewed the final candidates with very fine-toothed combs.”

“Agreed, but still we’ve got Buckley dead trying to break into his own, or maybe someone else’s, gear. And we won’t get a chance to learn anything more until the Slaasriithi give us access to the cargo mod again. But in the meantime—”

Caine suppressed a nod. “In the meantime, we have to presume that where there’s one inexplicable wildcard, there could be others. I just don’t see what an enemy agent would hope to achieve, or how.”

“Neither do I. And Buckley could simply have awakened into this gig knowing that he had to get rid of some incriminating black-market goods that were sent along with his gear. But we can’t rely on that supposition.”

“Agreed. But since we can’t confirm that or some other motive, we’d just be spinning our wheels when it comes to internal security protocols. So, we’ll have to be on constant watch for anything suspicious. Which means we won’t be watching anything very well.”

“No argument, sir. But one suggestion, if you don’t mind.”

“Look, Bannor: I’m not a professional soldier or a covert operative, so I’m glad for any advice you care to give.”

“First, don’t beat yourself up because you didn’t put safeguards in place after Buckley started acting hinky. Everyone makes mistakes in this business. And although you started as an amateur, you’re losing rookie status pretty quickly. Second, and more important, make sure you keep some distance from Keith Macmillan.”

“Do you think he could be suborned?”

Bannor clucked his tongue. “If I thought that, I’d tell you to stick to him like a tick. Never let your enemies out of sight. No, I’m thinking he’s your best bet for sniffing out if something is brewing in the legation.”

“You mean sabotage?”

“I don’t think that’s likely, but as you’ve said, we’ve got no leads and no hypothesis, only nonspecific worries. In that situation, the most valuable asset you can have is a pair of eyes and ears that no one knows is a member of IRIS. So if you chat with Keith too often, or act as though you have innate trust of him, then any plants in the group will notice. That means you lose Macmillan as the one trump card that you’ve got mixed into the deck but can pull out at any moment. Keep him as a secret asset that might either tweak to a plot in the making, or who can be in the right place to reverse a — well, an unfortunate incident.” Rulaine squinted ahead, toward a cluster of low, squat conelike trees. “You would not believe how often problems arise in the most unlikely places and for the most unlikely reasons.”

Caine remembered narrowly avoided assassination attempts on Delta Pavonis Three, in deep space, in Washington DC, in Greece, at the Convocation, on Barney Deucy. “Bannor, that is one bit of tactical wisdom of which I do not need to be convinced.”

Rulaine grinned crookedly at him. “No, I don’t suppose you do.”

They reached the edge of the pseudo-tarmac as Yiithrii’ah’aash led the legation to join with a cluster of Slaasriithi from the same subtaxon as his new attendants. Continuing onward, the ambassador began gesturing and explaining something about the grove of bush-trees which they were entering.

“Come on,” urged Caine. “Let’s not miss the tour.”

Chapter Twenty-Two. BIOBAND’S VALLAND GJ 1248 ONE (“ADUMBRATUS”)

As Caine worked his way to the head of the legation, Yiithrii’ah’aash continued on into a grove of immense, hypertrophied bushes which were simultaneously reminiscent of pointy mushrooms and very squat Christmas trees. “These are one of our most effective organisms for inducing xenobiots to become receptive to our own flora. And ultimately, to our settlers and other fauna.”

Trent Howarth looked around, puzzled. “Isn’t this planet already inhabited by Slaasriithi?” He glanced meaningfully at the ambassador’s shorter, thicker assistants.

“What you see, Mr. Howarth, are pioneer inducers of change, not colonists. Their life work is to shape the environment by fostering symbiotic or cooperative relationships between the indigenous biota and our own. Where that is not possible, we will establish preserves of our own biota by crowding out the native ones. These plants excel at that task.” Yiithrii’ah’aash gestured toward what Riordan was already thinking of as a cone tree. “By using their canopy to capture all the light and water that would normally find its way down to the ground, and by selectively sharing the resulting resources with our own — or receptive indigenous — biota, the trees claim the area beneath them for our exploitation. We introduce our own biota into it, and then work at inducing further mutations to maximize the harmony between the two families of bioforms.”

Phil Friel’s soft voice rose from the rear of the group. “You keep using the word ‘induce’ when you speak about changing an organism. Since you seem to have a wide command of our language, I’m wondering if that repetition is not merely intentional, but important.” Tina Melah glanced at the quiet Irishman with unveiled admiration. Of course, Tina didn’t seem to bother with veils of any type.

Yiithrii’ah’aash purred. “Indeed, we use the word ‘induce’ quite purposefully. It describes how we prefer to transform biota: to provide the correct environmental circumstances and monitoring to encourage natural change in a desired direction. Creating change by using sudden force, whether by traumatic stimuli or mechanistic alteration, rarely produces stable environmental blending.”

They left the grove of cone trees along a path that straddled an irregular border between day-glo green lichens struggling out from beneath the Slaasriithi plants on one side and a diffuse violet moss pierced by intermittent black spikes on the other side. Caine tried to recall an analog for the latter flora, but the only image that came to mind was of sea urchins trying to push up through a carpet of violet cotton candy. The ground between the two masses of plants was a tangle of runners from both, many of which were brown and lank: die-off where the two families of vegetation met, fought, and died.

Oleg Danysh squinted along their probable path, which remained in the shade of the brightside wall: the high terminal moraine that sheltered both the indigenous and exogenous biota from the steady red-gold light of GJ 1248. “It seems, Ambassador, that you mean to follow the contact margin between your own imported species, and those native to this planet.”

“Very astute, Dr. Danysh. In addition to keeping us in the shade of the ridgeline, it allows us to visit where we are making our greatest progress to transform the native life. And so, it offers you the best opportunities to learn about us.”

“Well, about your work as planet-changers, at least,” Tina Melah drawled.

Yiithrii’ah’aash’s head turned back in her direction; he did not slow his forward progress. “You may find, Ms. Melah, that the latter reveals the former more profoundly than any other behavior of ours. What we do here is no different from what we do everywhere.”

“Even on your homeworld?” she wondered.

“Especially on our homeworld,” Yiithrii’ah’aash emphasized. “We seek to reconcile and blend different species, taxae, individuals. It is the great challenge and conundrum of life, wherever it exists, that stability is only achieved by acknowledging the inevitability of change, and is only preserved by working with the forces of entropy to create a dynamic equilibrium in the natural order.”

Gaspard aimed his chin toward the rose-tinted cream sky. “And if those endeavors reveal the nature of the Slaasriithi best, which behaviors would you say reveal humanity’s nature most clearly to you?”

“We have not known you for that long.” Yiithrii’ah’aash might have sounded evasive.

“True, but you have had reports on us from the Custodians while we were a protected species, and you have had access to a full compendium of our history and media for almost a year now. Surely you have some sense of which endeavors reveal the most about us.”

“I do,” Yiithrii’ah’aash admitted slowly. “Human nature, we find, is best revealed in endeavors characterized by uncertainty, innovation and crisis. So, we find depictions of your exploration, and of rescue operations, particularly informing.”

Caine waited for the third category of activity and, when he did not hear it, asked outright. “And war?”

Yiithrii’ah’aash slowed slightly, swiveled his head back at Riordan. “Yes. Most especially, war.”

They continued up the rough trail in silence.

* * *

As the legation descended into a shallow, bowl-like declivity, a number of indigenous creatures — akin to eyeless, arthropod-legged horned toads — leaped up from the native sward. Their coloration changed rapidly from an almost pixelated purple-magenta pattern that blended into the violet of the cotton-candy moss, to a cream gray. They hop-sprinted on their stick-pole legs to a pond fed by the small watercourse that burbled down from the rear lip of the hollow. Leaping into the pond, they remained in the shallows — and promptly disappeared, their cream coloration now blending with that of the sky-mirroring surface.

Hirano Mizuki lagged behind to observe the arthropod-toads. “How do they see where they are going? Sonar?”

Yiithrii’ah’aash’s tendrils switched downward, stayed there. “No. That creature’s eyes, while individually rudimentary, are distributed across the trunk of its body. Our analysis of its ocular neurology suggests it has full three-hundred-sixty-by-three-hundred-sixty-degree vision: not as acute as yours, but highly sensitive to changes in its visual field. It is very difficult to surprise them. Which is no doubt why they evolved their visual arrangement. It is their only defense against most of the local predators. That and their numbers.”

“Their numbers?” Nasr Eid echoed. “I do not understand.”

“A predator can only concentrate on, and eliminate, one creature at a time, Mr. Eid. The ubiquity of this species is an integral part of its evolutionary survival adaptation: it can easily absorb casualties which sate its predators.”

“Like rabbits,” Phil Friel observed.

“Sure don’t look like bunnies, though,” Tina Melah said quietly, using her confidential tone as an apparent justification for leaning in toward him.

“There are predators?” Gaspard’s assistant Dieter sounded more worried than curious.

“Most assuredly. Here at the contact zone between our exogenous biota and the planet’s indigenous species, we have particular need for the protection of our biological markers. The prey species learn quickly enough that the predators and larger creatures are perturbed by the scents and fauna of our transplanted ecozones. So the local prey species tend to gather at the margins of our ecozone, and may even flee into it to disincline predators from sustaining pursuit. This, of course, induces the indigenous prey species to form positive associations with our ecozone.”

Hirano Mizuki had not taken her eyes away from where the eye-gouging arthropod-toads remained motionless in the shallows. “It seems that you have done this many times before. Have you not, therefore, identified any of your own pheromones, or spores, which have the desired effect upon the local fauna?”

Yiithrii’ah’aash emitted a two-toned buzz-purr. “That is indeed a suitable question from an environmental planetologist. And yes, we have identified such species among our own flora. But unfortunately, the method whereby our plants transmit the desired compounds does not have acceptable latency in this environment.”

“You mean, they die off?” asked Miles O’Garran.

“Eventually, but that is not the primary drawback. The difficulty is in how quickly our compounds are carried out of this sheltered spot of the bioband, which we call its valland. Obviously, during your descent, you encountered the winds that blow constantly from the bright face to the dark face of this world.”

“Hardly noticed them,” Karam grumbled. Qin Lijuan hid a smile behind a hastily raised hand.

“Those winds create downdrafts as they reach the rear, glacier-wall of the valland. The lowest air currents are cooled as they pass over bioband and sink. However, the speed of the wind also creates a following draft, and the combination of the two exerts mild suction upon the air of the valland, creating a faint updraft. This updraft picks up any light airborne materials, such as our spores and pollens, and carries most of them over the glacier into the dark side wastes.”

Karam nodded. “Yeah, that kind of meteorology doesn’t sound ideal for airborne seeds that developed on a world where they could spread around easily.”

Yiithrii’ah’aash nodded. “There is a second challenge that is almost as great for seeds that evolved in an environment where they might, as you said, ‘spread around easily.’” The Slaasriithi gestured to the panorama of the valland: distant white glacial walls toward the darkside, the tall, shadowing moraine beneath which they walked, and an irregular and light-dappled postglacial terrain that stretched and rolled between them. “This biome is as long as Adumbratus’ equator. With the exception of some areas where the valland is disrupted by longitudinal, and thus transverse, mountain ranges, the vigorously biogenic part of this world averages less than one hundred kilometers in width. However, on most planets, plants evolve in an environment where there is global circulation of air and water; it is an ecosystem based upon radial patterns of expansion. Here, life exists within a narrow trench. Consequently, our species, which lack highly motile reproductory cells, are slow to spread, slow to take hold, slow to thrive. But even so, this world will thrive more profoundly because of them.”

“How so?”

Yiithrii’ah’aash’s fingers wriggled without specific direction. “Our flora is increasingly dominating this shaded lee of the terminal shielding moraine. This increases the amount of water retained in the valland, since our flora is more hydrophilic than the local plants. This has increased the density of indigenous fauna, particularly here along the margins of the two different biota. The creatures which thrive on water tend to be more prolific breeders when they are more lavishly hydrated, and so, improve their own biome. Ultimately, this new, positive survival trait for local species — the ability to tolerate the presence of ours — will dramatically enrich the entirety of this biosphere. That is in the nature of all biota: it changes its planet to become more suitable to its own procreative impulse.”

Riordan smiled. “When you put it that way, your process of biosphere transformation sounds almost mystical.”

“Does it? I wonder if something is simply being lost in translation. There is nothing mystic in this process. Life’s mission is to expand itself, to bring existence to where there was nothingness. And so, life is the great conundrum of the universe: it is a lever which lifts itself up. Its presence in the organic molecules of deep space, and what you label their interstellar panspermiate diffusion, is evidence of just how pervasive and powerful that impulse is.”

“So, one of the defining impulses of the physical universe is the creation of life?”

“It is, to use your own apt idiom, a force of nature.” Yiithrii’ah’aash ascended to the rim of the bowl, pointed down the opposite side. “Come; let us see this force at work.”

* * *

The lip of the bowl opened on to a flat expanse where the native “forest”—stacks of vine-bound cream-teal tumbleweeds — were embroiled in a war of econiche flanking maneuvers against the cone trees and giant ferns of Slaasriithi origin. Arrayed just in front of that latter mass of Kelly- and lime-green vegetation, Slaasriithi were patiently watching some of their own fauna roll what looked like unripe grapefruits toward a waiting clutch of indigenous animals. The Slaasriithi creatures, which resembled a nutria-flying squirrel hybrid with far too many eyes, deposited the fruits in the midground between the two groups, then backed off a few steps and waited.

Their local counterparts — smooth, leather-backed creatures with six squat legs, four small eyes, and a head that resembled an armor-plated badger crossbred with a catfish — waited, watched, and began side-winding forward. Several emitted a crackling hiss as they approached. In response to those which hissed, the surprisingly swift Slaasriithi nutria-squirrels scuttled forward and grabbed their fruits back to safety. In the case of the local creatures that approached more placidly, the flap-legged nutrias edged forward slightly. In most cases, the local creatures retreated. In several cases, they tolerated the modest advance of the alien animals until they could grab the fruit and scramble away. When the more truculent catfish-badgers then tried to muscle in and get some of the water-rich fruits retrieved by their fellows, the Slaasriithi summoned an almost invisible drone, which made a quick pass between the contending local creatures. The drone was noiseless and did not visibly discharge any payload, but it must have released a marker spore which repulsed the less cooperative local creature: in each case, the would-be fruit hijacker scuttled away empty-handed.

Another group of Slaasriithi, a taxon subtly different in physiology, unobtrusively followed the more cooperative local creatures. When they began tearing into their fruit, the Slaasriithi released insects which quickly caught the familiar scent. They hovered over the backs of the greedily feeding indigenous creatures until they abandoned the stripped rind. Then the insects descended to scavenge the remains.

“Let me guess,” Ben Hwang muttered, his arms folded. “By hovering over the local animals, these insects inadvertently ‘marked’ them. That allows you to follow the individuals which grabbed the fruit and to encourage their propagation.”

Yiithrii’ah’aash seemed pleased. “You are an exceptionally quick study, Doctor Hwang. Your surmise is correct. The rest is, I trust, obvious.”

Hirano Mizuki nodded. “The indigenous creatures which have tolerated greater proximity with your own species, being better fed and hydrated, now have better survival and breeding odds. In that way, you are increasing the prevalence of whatever combination of predisposition and learned behaviors made them more tolerant. Conversely, by ensuring that the aggressive ones cannot hijack the fruit, you reduce their breeding odds and, consequently, their ability to impart the unwanted traits to subsequent generations. Over time, you will provide the changed species with additional training opportunities and consequent survival and breeding advantages. And the final step will be to increase their toleration for your own fauna until they are comfortable mingling, and even sharing the fruit.”

Dora Veriden was watching the flapped nutria-squirrels. “Must be handy to have those trained muskrats ready to work for you. How long does it take to bribe them into submission?”

Yiithrii’ah’aash turned, as did several of the legation, at the facetiousness of Dora’s tone. “The species you refer to, Ms. Veriden, has several of our own traits, which we find not only useful but crucial. Specifically, Slaasriithi intelligence arose not so much from tool use, but from our reflex to establish relationships with other species, and thereby increase our social sophistication, specialization, and survival strategies.”

The ambassador gestured back toward the nutria-squirrels. “We did not train these creatures to apply a crude version of operant conditioning upon these indigenous species. It is a reflex, coded into their genetic matrix. This is how they, and we, survive and ultimately thrive in new environments.”

Ben Hwang nodded thoughtfully. “It sounds like a very gradual process, however.”

“‘Gradual’ is an extremely subjective concept, Doctor.” Yiithrii’ah’aash began leading them into rougher terrain that was centered around a drumlin in the lee of the terminal moraine. “Time cost is strongly influenced by how one perceives time itself. And that perception, in turn, is strongly influenced by one’s concept of self and mortality.”

Gaspard eagerly snapped at the discursive bait Yiithrii’ah’aash had left trailing in the wake of his last statement. “And how would you say Slaasriithi perception of self, and mortality, differs from human?”

Yiithrii’ah’aash purred low and long. “Our individualism and self-worth derive from the role we play in the polytaxic matrix that is our community. Conversely, in human cultures, community is the outgrowth of a consensus between individuals. Which is to say, the individual is the foundation of your society, not the community.

“And so, when you label our bioforming a ‘gradual’ process, I believe you are measuring it according to the life-costs you would associate such an enterprise: lost experiences, socialization, resources, additional accomplishments. It is, according to your species’ natural scales of value, a ‘bad deal.’ However, for my species, one’s role is innate to one’s taxon, so our instincts and aptitudes lead inexorably to the tasks that are our sources of fulfillment.”

Gaspard cleared his throat. “And which, er, taxae, are working here on Adumbratus?”

“My assistants are hortatorae. The trainers you saw are gerulorae. Only one other taxon is present, and very few of those: the novitorae. They are responsible for researching innovations in biota.”

Caine, on Yiithrii’ah’aash’s other side, asked quietly. “And what of you, Yiithrii’ah’aash? To what taxon do you belong?”

The ambassador swung his sensor cluster slowly toward Caine. “I belong to a taxon that is much, much less populous than the others. In your language, the closest approximation would be ratiocinatorae.”

Caine smiled to himself: And why am I not surprised?

They made their way down into the rougher terrain.

* * *

Gaspard was gasping as the legation, now strung out, paused to regather in a wide, rocky wadi. “I must confess, I am astounded at what you have achieved in the modification of this planet. I admit enough envy to wonder if these are skills you might teach us?”

And so begins the prenegotiation process. Riordan hopped up on a rock, waved for the stragglers to catch up. Macmillan and Wu, now at the rear of the group, waved their acknowledgement. Collarcoms had very limited range on Adumbratus.

Yiithrii’ah’aash responded to Gaspard with a lazy roll of his fingers. “Our bioforming processes are not difficult if one does not proceed in haste.”

Caine wondered if that caveat would remain audible over the cascade of imaginary gold ringing in CEOs’ ears. With Slaasriithi methods, marginal planetary environments could be made shirt-sleeve, and brown worlds could be made at least marginally green.

If those long-term prospects were not a sufficient hook with which to snag the attention of human avarice, Yiithrii’ah’aash’s next offer was sure to irresistibly harpoon it. “A selective application of the processes you have seen here, and on board our ship, might also help you in other ways. For instance, what if your spacecraft were able to reduce their environmental resupply needs by ninety percent?”

Morgan Lymbery broke his long silence abruptly. “That would mean achieving a ninety-eight percent efficient bioloop compared to the eighty percent that is our current best.”

“Yes,” Yiithrii’ah’aash answered simply.

“You could do that?” It was no longer shortness of breath which made Gaspard sound like he was on the verge of panting.

Yiithrii’ah’aash’s neck oscillated diffidently. “Your ships, being mechanical, have intrinsic efficiency limits. But they could be dramatically improved, with the right biota and symbiots.”

“The right biota and symbiots”? Caine hopped down from his perch. And what pheromones or spores might they start releasing, either on our ships or our new shirtsleeve worlds, to make sure that we don’t hiss or growl when grabbing the next piece of fruit you offer to us? I just wonder if—

“Caine, come in.” Bannor’s collarcom-distorted voice was sharp, no-nonsense. “We’ve got trouble.”

Riordan saw a plume of dust at the midpoint of their slowly recompacting column. Damn it—He started sprinting in that direction. “Sitrep, Major.”

“Something charged out from the shadows of the shield moraine. Didn’t seem affected by the scent markers; went straight at its target.”

“Which was?”

“Dora Veriden. And she’s running like hell in your general direction.”

Chapter Twenty-Three. BIOBAND’S VALLAND and IN ORBIT GJ 1248 ONE (“ADUMBRATUS”)

Caine started shouting instructions into his collarcom. “Tygg, did you hear Bannor’s report?”

“Most of it. I think. Commo’s scratchy.”

“Stay close to the ambassadors. You and O’Garran set up a defensive perimeter with the others. If Yiithrii’ah’aash can do something about the situation, have him do it quickly. Without weapons, all we can do is throw sticks and shout. Doubt that’s going to do very much.”

“I’m on it.”

Riordan changed the com channel. “Bannor, is Wu with you?”

“No, back with Macmillan.”

Damn it. “So who’s closest to Veriden?”

“Me and you. But I’m just topping the rise that she got chased off of. Karam took off after the critter that rushed her. More guts than brains, that guy. But he’s dropping behind pretty quickly.”

Caine swerved off the path they’d followed, headed out into the alien undergrowth. “Can you still see Veriden and the — the creature?”

“Yeah, but—”

“Then stay right where you are. You’re the only one with eyes on both objectives. Can you see me yet? I’m coming around the northern spur of the drumlin.”

“No, I — yes: you just came into sight.”

“Good. I can’t see Dora or the creature, so talk me into an intercept. And talk Veriden toward me.”

“Yeah, but what the hell are you going to do?”

“Find a handy rock and hope to hell it doesn’t want to tackle two of us. Talk Karam toward us also, and Howarth. Have Wu and Macmillan watch our backs for more critters. They might not hunt alone.”

“I’m on it. For now, angle a little to your left. You’ve got about a minute of running ahead of you. Well, maybe more.” The carrier wave snicked off.

Riordan heard yelling behind him, then multiple pages to his collarcom from random team members. He ignored it all. Bannor would either intervene and play switchboard or delegate it to Tygg, but either way, combat experience had taught Caine that when you are at the tip of the spear, you cannot see and coordinate the big picture. His only job was to keep closing, stay alert, and listen for updates.

Which came in fast enough. “Caine,” Bannor shouted, “swerve into that gulch you’re approaching on the right. I got Dora to duck in there. She’ll be coming straight toward you. With company right behind.”

“Roger that. Where’s Karam?”

“Bringing up the rear. Probably wishing he’d spent a few more hours in the gym.”

“You get a look at the thing chasing Dora?”

“Nope. Just saw its dust.”

“Veriden tell you anything?”

“She’s too busy sprinting, breathing, and cursing.”

Can’t say I blame her. “Any sign of other predators?”

“Nope. Yiithrii’ah’aash’s signal is bad, but he made it clear that this creature is not a pack predator.”

Well, some good news at last. “Send Macmillan and Wu after me once the rest of the legation has regrouped under Tygg’s protection. And send out the ex-military EMT from Peking, Xue.”

“You’ve got it — and you should have a visual any moment now.”

“Maybe, but I’ve got a big boulder in my way. I’m going to have to go arou—”

Riordan dodged a blur that shot out from the blind side of the boulder: Dora Veriden. She detected Caine just before colliding with him: her sidestepping dodge morphed effortlessly into the karate move known as a back-stepping shuto, or knife-hand block. Damn. Bodyguard, indeed.

“Shit, Riordan: are you trying to kill me with a body block?”

“Hello yourself. Find a weapon. How far behind you is it?”

“We have three seconds. Fan out.”

Which seemed the only thing to do. Caine spotted and scooped up a hand-sized stone the same moment he saw a new blur come around the boulder. He went into a sideways ready stance, stone cocked back—

And stared. The creature halted abruptly, might have been staring back. But Riordan couldn’t tell because he could not discern any obvious eyes. Hell, nothing was obvious about this critter.

Clearly one of Adumbratus’ indigenous species, it was a chitinous triped standing — crouching? — over two meters tall. Its smooth legs swept upward into curved, articulated joints. Its ovate thorax was topped by a tapering, swaying neck sheathed in reticulated plates. The head resembled a hyper-streamlined ball peen hammer, black specks chasing down either side of it like a dotted line. The underside of the hammer’s head snapped up and down once; not a typical predator’s jaws — no fangs or decisively sharp teeth — but the force of that surprised bite at empty air would have put a grizzly bear to shame.

The creature — a blend of dark cerulean and cyan with black-violet racing stripes — started toward Caine but then flinched toward Dora again. Wait: did it feint at me before attacking her? Or was it jumping away from me? One way to find out—

Riordan leapt into the space between the creature and Dora.

The blue tripod-nightmare drew up short, rattled ominously from someplace in the rear of its ball peen head, but finally jerked back. It swayed from side to side.

Caine swayed with it.

More annoyed rattling. It feinted as though it might try to slip through the gap between Riordan and the boulder, and thereby get to Dora, but Caine had the measure of the creature: its aversion to him precluded its use of that excessively narrow space. Anticipating its ploy, Caine jumped to the other side.

The tripod, leaping to exploit what it clearly hoped would be a widened hole in Caine’s other flank, thrashed in midair, screeching like china plates in a woodchipper as it collapsed into an abortive tangle of limbs.

Veriden moved to stand just behind Caine. “Coño,” she muttered.

“Yeah,” Riordan agreed. He took a step forward.

The blue and black monster, having just regained its tripedal footing, skittered backward. It quivered, as if at the end of an invisible leash. Caine had no knowledge of the fauna of GJ 1248, and damn little of any other planet besides Earth’s, but the creature’s intents were unmistakable. It desperately wanted to leap forward, to trample and gut Riordan. But a countervailing impulse was holding it back: not mere uncertainty or fear, but a shuddering aversion akin to a human resisting immersion in bleach.

From the direction of the trail and from beyond the boulder, distant cries were growing rapidly louder.

With a swiftness that Riordan had never seen in a quadruped — possibly because this creature’s body didn’t turn; its thorax simply rotated — the tripedal attacker skittered off, raising up a considerable cloud of dust.

Caine, duty suit sticking to his sweat-covered body, shouted into the collarcom, “Bannor, call off Karam. Make sure that thing’s got an unobstructed route of retreat.”

“Already done. And Jesus, is that monster fast. So much for ‘no predators worth worrying about.’ I’m really interested to hear how Yiithrii’ah’aash is going to explain that one.”

“Yeah,” Caine agreed. And I’m going to be even more interested to learn why it avoided me like the plague — and hunted Veriden like she was dinner.

* * *

Caine’s hair was still damp from showering when his stateroom’s privacy chime rang. “Computer: permit entry.” Then, louder: “Come in.”

Ben Hwang and Bannor Rulaine stepped through the opening hatchway. “Got a minute?” asked the major.

“Probably just about that. We haven’t heard from Yiithrii’ah’aash since getting back to the ship, but he’ll want to chat with us pretty soon.”

Hwang nodded. “Undoubtedly. Gaspard is concerned that today’s events could derail what he calls the ‘relationship fundament of initial diplomatic overtures.’”

“Do you think Gaspard spoke that way before he attended the Sorbonne?”

Hwang sighed. “Bannor, I suspect he came out of the womb speaking that way. But he may be right. Yiithrii’ah’aash cut the tour a lot shorter than he intended and has been very reticent since.”

Caine shrugged. “Yes, but I’m not sure that’s indicative of disappointment or anger with us.”

Ben folded his arms. “No? Why not?”

“Look, we don’t know why that creature didn’t avoid Veriden’s scent marker, but the bottom line is that our visit to Yiithrii’ah’aash’s ‘safe’ planet went to hell in a handbasket. It was like going to a new friend’s house who tells you that his dog doesn’t bite, and then looking down to find its jaws locked on your leg. So Yiithrii’ah’aash may be as embarrassed as he is upset.”

“Yes, but Gaspard is still worried that Yiithrii’ah’aash will reassess whether the Slaasriithi should ally with us.”

Which might be a blessing in disguise. But what Riordan said was: “That’s a reasonable trepidation.” He sat, looked at Bannor. “So, you were going to speak with Dora.”

Bannor nodded. “I did.”

“She didn’t know why that thing might have attacked her?”

“We didn’t get that far. She pulled rank and clammed up.”

Hwang stared. “She pulled rank? How? She’s part of our security detachment, right?”

Riordan shook his head. “Technically, she is Gaspard’s personal security asset. She doesn’t have to coordinate with, or report to, me at all. Unless she wants to. Or Gaspard instructs her to do so.”

Bannor nodded. “Which was the line she took with me.”

Hwang’s stare had grown wider. “So we can’t get her to answer questions about the incident until he, or she, says so?”

Bannor’s nod seemed to trigger the privacy chime. Caine raised his voice. “Come in.”

Dora Veriden entered, looking more sullen than usual. Caine stood, resisted the urge to comment on her extraordinary timing. “Hello, Ms. Veriden. How are you feeling?”

Her incongruously elfin features went from dour to vinegary. “You keep asking me that: why?”

“I only asked you one other time: right after the creature ran away. I’m checking that you’re doing okay.”

“Listen: when it was chasing me, I wasn’t so okay. That’s over. So now I’m okay. Is that so hard to understand?”

Riordan suppressed a sigh. “I understand that, Ms. Veriden. But I don’t understand your attitude. You’re part of the legation, and I’m concerned with your welfare, both professional and personal. That’s all.” He gestured toward a seat as he resumed his own.

Dora ignored the gesture. “Look, I don’t need your personal concern. And professionally, the only person who has any reason, or right, to inquire after my status is my employer: Ambassador Gaspard.”

Riordan shook his head. “That’s not quite accurate, Ms. Veriden. He is certainly the only person who can give you security-related directives.” Which is a bad arrangement, but that’s a different topic. “However, as a member of this legation, your moment-to-moment personal safety is my responsibility. Whether you like it or not.”

“Not,” Dora answered. And finally took a seat.

Well, I’ve got to give her points for bluntness. “Ms. Veriden, while I’d have been glad for you to stop by on your own initiative, I doubt that’s what brought you here.”

Veriden nodded. “Yeah. Gaspard sent me.”

Caine waited. He didn’t want to make Dora any more uncomfortable than she had to be, but on the other hand, she tended to nip and snarl when others initiated conversation. Better to let her proceed in whatever manner she chose.

She looked Riordan in the eye. “That animal came at me because I didn’t put on the biomarkers.”

Bannor leaned forward sharply. “What?”

She leaned right back at him. “Are you deaf? I said I didn’t put on the markers.”

Bannor’s posture did not change, but his color did; flushing, Rulaine’s jaw muscles clenched as he struggled to suppress a presumably blistering reply—

“Ms. Veriden.” Riordan kept his voice professional, but sharp. “I assure you, Major Rulaine’s hearing is unimpaired. You may not be a part of my security team, but I will insist upon a modicum of respect when you interact with its members. Now: why didn’t you apply the protective biomarkers?”

“I–I thought it would be best if one of us didn’t.”

Caine leaned back, considered. The tone of her voice suggested that the explanation wasn’t a complete fabrication, but he could tell it wasn’t the whole truth, either. But right now, he had a concrete explanation, and that was enough to start with. “Why did you think it prudent that one of the legation remain unmarked?”

She looked at Caine quizzically. “You really want to know?”

“If I didn’t, I wouldn’t ask.”

She stared at him sidelong for a moment before replying. “Okay. So, these Slaasriithi seem to have reversed the importance of machinery and biology. That makes me wonder: shouldn’t we be as careful of their sprays and markers and gifts as they should be of accepting our bugged ID badges and presents? How would we know if they’re marking us for their own purposes? And how can we be sure that they won’t include biochemicals that can be used to influence or control us?”

Hwang was shaking his head, but Caine jumped in before he could start enumerating the many ways in which this was unlikely or impossible. “Ms. Veriden, I admire your attention to our more subtle security challenges. Be assured, the same thoughts have occurred to us.”

She was surprised by that response but rallied rapidly and went on the offensive: “Yeah? Then why didn’t you dump your container on the ground when no one was looking?”

Caine smiled. “Firstly, I was in the front rank. It’s not as though I had the opportunity to do so surreptitiously. But the real reason is this: have you also considered that part of our legation’s role is to function like a canary in a coal mine?”

Dora Veriden’s mouth closed and then opened; she spent a moment waiting for a retort that never materialized. “No,” she said flatly. “I’m not even sure what you mean.” Hwang and Bannor looked equally flummoxed.

Riordan steepled his fingers. “Ms. Veriden, it seems you’ve spent most of your life on the sharp end, so this won’t be news to you: any probe into a new area is somewhat like a recon mission. The main objective is to get in, look around, then return to report. But even if the mission is lost, even if it disappears without a trace, that’s still valuable intel. It warns the people who sent the recon team that the region is not completely safe and that any further entry should be handled with caution. And if even a few survivors make it back? More valuable still: not only can you debrief them, but scan them for pathogens, nanites, any other contaminants or suspicious substances.”

Riordan leaned forward. “We’re a diplomatic mission, Ms. Veriden, but we’re also performing that recon function. Part of our job is to take risks, to gather information, even if it means making ourselves vulnerable to possible ploys and bugs and viruses by which our hosts might influence us. Because when we get back home, we’ll be quarantined and examined like few humans ever have been. Consequently, our apparently uncritical trust in the Slaasriithi is not a sign of incompetence. So, in the future, when our diplomatic host makes a request of the entire legation, you will do two things.”

Dora’s jaw set. “And those are?”

“You will inform me if you intend not to follow that request, and you will get express permission from Ambassador Gaspard before you refuse to do so, which he will relay to me. Because he is the head of our legation, and because you are his personal employee, you alone of all persons even have that right. But you will keep us in the loop.” Because you sure as hell didn’t clear today’s noncompliance with Gaspard first, or he’d never have ordered you to come talk to me like a truant child sent to the principal’s office. Which he surely knows is worse than any other punitive action or reprimand he could impose on you.

Veriden’s teeth might have been clenched as she muttered, “Agreed.” She rose to leave.

“Ms. Veriden, one other matter.”

She turned back toward Riordan. “Yes?”

“I’d like to combine your professional efforts with those of my team, when and if the ambassador permits it and circumstances dispose you to be willing to do so. This legation will be strongest when all its security assets are pulling in the same direction.”

Her expression was equal parts incredulous and amused. “Are you serious?”

“You might say I’m deadly serious, Ms. Veriden, since it is our shared responsibility to deal with matters of life and death. And frankly, I know high ability and intelligence when I see them.”

She folded her arms. “You’ve probably figured out that I’m not much of a team player. And I don’t like taking orders.”

“I’ve noticed. I also observe that you do take orders even if you don’t enjoy it, and that you have skills which make you a valuable addition to any team, even if you are mostly working on your own.”

Veriden opened the door, paused on the threshold. Her mumbled response sounded more like a confession. “I’ll think about it.”

Once the door closed behind her, Bannor shook his head. “Caine, you’re the boss — but her? Really?”

“She’s difficult, yes. But she’s damned good.” Bannor rubbed his chin briskly. Caine had learned what that gesture meant: the ex-Green Beanie didn’t want to be insubordinate, but there was some issue he really wanted to raise. “You’re worried about something besides her sunny disposition?”

“Yeah,” Rulaine admitted. “Gaspard’s assistant Dieter got nervous and talkative after today’s mishap with the local wildlife. Seems this isn’t the first time that Ms. Veriden went off cowboying on her own and became an embarrassment to her employer.”

“So she’s ruined operations that got in the way of her own special brand of problem-solving?”

“Oh, that too, but I was thinking more about her political, er, forthrightness.”

Caine nodded. “Go on.”

“One of the reasons she never finished college or even a certificate program was because she always took the administration to task and made herself persona non grata in record time. Maintained a few vlogs — some directly, some via aliases — that are about as inflammatory as you can get before becoming a ‘person of interest’ to security agencies.”

“Whose security agencies, specifically?”

“Take your pick. She’s pretty much an equal-opportunity anarchist.”

Hwang’s eyebrows went high. “She’s a genuine anarchist?”

Rulaine waved a dismissive hand. “A figure of speech, but apt. Can’t find a single bloc or nation that she trusts or even considers acceptable. All her sympathies are with resistance movements, underground organizations, and what activists dub ‘post-national collectives.’ And you know what that means.”

Hwang looked from Bannor to Caine and back to Bannor. “Well, I don’t know what that means. So please add a caption.”

Rulaine shrugged. “The megacorporations have a long history of mining antigovernment organizations for support. They throw a lot of money at them: sometimes directly, sometimes through plausibly deniable proxies.”

Hwang screwed up his face. “And do these groups really join forces with the megacorporations? They’re far more autocratic than nation-states.”

Caine shook his head. “It’s not a direct alliance. But the megas aren’t really looking for cocombatants against ‘the tyranny of nations.’ They’re just funding grassroots resistance to national authority.” He turned back toward Bannor. “But do you really think Dora’s been a megacorporation’s agent provocateur?”

Rulaine shrugged. “No way to know. Dieter tells me that Gaspard has complained to DGSE that even her classified dossier is threadbare. Lots of gaps in her timeline. Lots of arrows pointing to sealed case files and intelligence summaries.”

Ben Hwang’s palmcomp buzzed. He glanced at it, rolled his eyes. “The Great Man has summoned the two of us. He wants that classified summary he put off.”

“And he wants it right now, I’ll bet.”

“No. He wants it an hour ago. When should I tell him we’ll be there?”

“An hour ago,” Caine sighed. “Let’s go.”

Chapter Twenty-Four. IN ORBIT GJ 1248 ONE (“ADUMBRATUS”)

Karam Tsaami, his head half into the avionics interface bay on the bridge of the TOCIO shuttle, nearly knocked off the top of his skull when a female voice murmured, “Hey,” not half a meter behind him. The resulting occipital thwack literally made his vision swim — and made his uninvited visitor chuckle.

Determined to show just how little enthusiasm he had for being a source of slapstick humor, Karam yanked his torso out of the bay, ready to tear the head off whatever damn fool had—

He discovered Dora Veriden watching him with a sardonic smile. “You always that graceful?”

“No,” Karam grumbled, rubbing the back of his head and unsuccessfully trying to remember what choice cascade of insults he had been preparing to unleash. “Sometimes I’m really clumsy.”

Veriden grinned, flopped down into the copilot’s couch, avoiding the various screens and protuberances of the half glass/half “steam” cockpit. And Tsaami realized, she knows her way around flight controls.

“Yeah,” she agreed, “you are clumsy. And sometimes you’re really stupid, too.”

Karam stared at her. “You’re welcome.”

“Huh?” she replied.

“Well, I figure that tracking me down on the shuttle so you can insult me is your own special way of saying thanks for my chasing after the monster that was trying to eat you earlier today.”

He had intended his tone to indicate that his comment was as ironic as hers. But Dora’s considerable brows met in a descending vee. “Didn’t ask for your help, and didn’t want it. Which is part of why I’m here: you were damned stupid chasing after that thing. It could’ve eviscerated you.”

“Yeah, well, it seemed like you could use a hand. Or at least a diversion. So I—”

“That’s exactly what I’m talking about: that was really stupid. If I need your help, I’ll ask for it. But your macho button got pressed and out you charged, making just that much more trouble for me. Because then I had your safety to worry about, too.”

“Hey, I was safe enough. You were its only target, and I’ve heard through the grapevine why that was. But secondly, I didn’t charge out there because of machismo,” he asserted half-truthfully. “I’ve been shuttling people back and forth to new planets and new colonies for ten years now. When they run into trouble, I go help. It’s that simple. It’s reflex: not duty, not machismo. Get it?” Karam almost believed the whole spiel himself. Damn, I’m good.

Dora Veriden frowned. “Okay, fair enough. Because you’d have been pretty disappointed if you were motivated by hopeful chivalry.”

“You mean because of the peculiar way you show gratitude?”

“No: I mean because I don’t usually walk on your side of the sexual street.”

Karam felt his eyebrows come down, then jump up. “Oh.” He shrugged: not like that was a big deal, or would have influenced his actions one bit.

“Oh,” he repeated and felt like an idiot. They sat in the pilot and copilot couches in silence for almost half a minute. It felt like half an hour.

“Look,” Dora started as suddenly as their semi-conversation had stopped, “I came here to explain something to you. And only to you.”

“Are you asking me to keep it a secret?”

She thought for a moment. “No. I just don’t feel I owe anyone else the real explanation for why I didn’t put on the marker spray.”

Karam cocked his head. “Really? Not Cai — Captain Riordan? Hell, he got in the critter’s way.”

Dora had made a face. “First, that was his job, right? And second, I’m not in the habit of thanking the people who’ve made a career out of using me.”

“Whoa, whoa: Riordan has made a career out of using you?”

Dora rolled her eyes. “Hey, figurative language alert. Not him, personally, no, but people like him.” When she saw the unrelieved perplexity in Karam’s face she threw up her hands. “Government types. Our Illustrious Leaders. Protectors of the Social Contract.”

Karam found he really didn’t want to argue with Dora — which was odd because he had a natural gift for contrarianism — so he frowned and shook his head. “I think you may want to revisit your assumptions about Caine.”

“You mean, Captain Caine Riordan? The guy who was sent by governments to find exosapients on Delta Pavonis Three? Who then made his report at the interbloc Parthenon Dialogs? Who was then appointed as the primary liaison for the international delegation to the Convocation of the Accord, and who then fought in the war we just finished? You mean that dedicated antigovernment figure?”

Karam kept his voice level. “Seems you’ve filled your own pockets with more than a few kings’ coins, over time.” Seeing Dora’s dark olive-toned skin darkening even further, he hastened to add, “All I’m saying is that what people do isn’t always a reliable indicator of their sympathies, of why they did those things.”

“Are you saying that Riordan is antigovernment? He sure doesn’t seem like it to me. His current uniform and titles fit him like a glove.”

Karam shrugged. “Yeah, but Caine hasn’t been very popular in the halls of government, either.”

“No? He charge too much?”

“No: he has a bad habit of telling the truth. Including the truths that governments don’t like hearing.”

Dora slouched back, arms crossed, but she didn’t follow up with a new gibe.

Karam leaned back as well. “We got to know each other pretty well on the way out here. All the other guys knew him from before.”

“Yeah; all servitors of the state.”

“Yeah, servitors of states which protected Caine, but weren’t always comfortable with him or what he might do. Of which those protectors were apprised.”

Dora nodded faintly. “So they were really his warders.”

Karam tilted his head from side to side, not disagreeing, but not wholly agreeing either. “It’s more nuanced than that.”

“Oh, it always is. Naked oppression is never naked oppression. Except when it is. But then the victims deserve it.”

Karam couldn’t keep himself from rolling his eyes. “Look, I’m sure you’ve got a boatload of witty barbs and comebacks for every occasion and this one in particular. But the bottom line is this: from what I can tell, Caine has considerable reservations about how much anyone can trust government. But he usually takes the side of government against any of the megacorporations which are trying to become more powerful than nations because he doesn’t trust those at all. And given how CoDevCo tried selling our whole species into Ktoran slavery just a year ago, I can’t say that he was too far off.”

Dora frowned, looked out the cockpit windows; the shields were mostly closed, so only a narrow slit of starfield was visible. When she spoke again, her voice wasn’t as hard, had a musical flow rather than a staccato edge. “I grew up in Trinidad, mostly. My grandmama was one of the refugees during the Megadeath famines. She was tough as nails. Had my Mom even before she married my grandad, who died during one of the anti-refugee riots of the Fifties. So grandad’s mother took in my grandma and helped raise my infant mother, whose health was never good. Might have been one of the immune viruses that came along with the refugees. Might have been years of malnutrition before the richer countries decided to help the ones they abandoned during the Megadeath.

“Anyhow, I remember when the big countries started coming back. And when they did — even before they brought food, even before they started reopening our hospitals — they sent ‘health workers.’ And do you know what those health workers did first?”

Karam, who had grown up in Toronto and hadn’t the faintest idea of the conditions which had been prevalent in poorer countries after the Megadeath, shook his head.

Dora grimaced, and if her expression usually fluctuated between sardonic and angry, it now slid toward bitter and sad. “The health workers—health workers — from the big countries came in and dusted us with poisons. Poisons to kill lice, poisons to kill bed bugs, poisons to kill chiggers. And then our own governments dusted us with poisons to kill fungi, because they knew that any new clothes we received we’d try to save for good. We’d hide them away in a closet, where they would get filthy with mold in a month.”

She scratched her shoulder-length hair distractedly. “Dusted, dusted, dusted. You could always smell it; you could always feel it. The health workers claimed that, in order to be effective, it had to be everywhere. And it was. Everywhere. I had only two sets of clothes: torn pants and an old shirt for work and a faded, fraying dress for ‘good.’ And it didn’t matter how much you washed them; the dust was always on them, in the seams, inside the fabric. It got inside of us, too, I guess. Sure got inside of my mom. Killed her.”

Karam hadn’t intended it, but his voice came out as a whisper. “Your mom died of poisoning?”

“I’m pretty sure that’s what caused her leukemia, or myeloma, or whatever cancer killed her.” Dora’s voice grew distant, distracted. “There was a big surge in toxin-related cancers at that time. But after the famine and epidemic death-counts of the Megadeath, no one much worried about what might kill you ten years later. Everyone was still worried about staying alive for the next week, the next month.” Her eyes and voice resharpened. “Until, of course, our old colonial masters returned in the guise of megacorporations who employed us for pennies on the dollar to work in conditions that wouldn’t have passed the health codes of any developed nation.”

“I’m sorry,” mumbled Karam.

If Dora heard, she didn’t give any sign of it. “So I don’t like getting dusted or sprayed with anything. Not then, not now, not ever.” She turned to him. “It wasn’t your job to help me. And you don’t know me from Eve. But you seem like a decent enough guy. So I wanted you to know why today’s attack occurred. It was on me, and only on me. I endangered myself, and that was my business. Maybe I endangered others, too, which wasn’t my business, but that only makes it all the more stupid that you were trying to help me. Of anyone out there on that alien grassland today, I was the person no one should have been helping.”

“But you were the one who needed the help.”

“Damn, Karam, you are one thick-skulled moron, aren’t you?”

“I like you, too.”

She rolled her eyes. “Look, didn’t your mother or someone tell you to stay away from trouble? Well, I’m that trouble.”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t much listen to Mom.”

“Well, this time you probably should. I’m not safe to get too close to. Hell, that’s why they named me Dora.”

“Um…Dora isn’t exactly a name that says, ‘danger! danger!’”

She shook her head. “You wouldn’t think so, would you? Hell, even I didn’t get it until I was older. Growing up, I just thought I was named after Dora the Explorer.”

“Named after who?”

Dora smiled ruefully. “Dora the Explorer. It was an old, old video show for kids. But we still had it because — well, because my grandmama hoarded crap. We had six different computers stashed away, and we used them up, starting with the oldest first. But damn, grandmama was one shrewd lady: she could patch together kluges of software that should never have worked, and videos, and songs, and, well, you get the picture. So there was this show, Dora the Explorer. She was this girl adventurer who looked a little like me, and was Latina like me — kind of. I watched it a lot. I knew my mom had, too, so I thought she had named me after Dora.

“But my mom died when I was only five, so I never thought to ask her. I just assumed it, and I kept assuming it until my grandmama was dying and called me by my real name, the name my mom had actually given me: Pandora. The mystery box that should not be opened.” She rose from the couch. “So you might want to think about who you go saving, or trying to become friends with.”

Karam shrugged. “If I had to do it again, I would. Because it doesn’t matter who you are, or who you aren’t.” Well, mostly.

Dora threw up her hands. “I just can’t beat the stupid out of you, can I?”

“Not now, you can’t,” Karam muttered as a message scrolled across his comms monitor. “Yiithrii’ah’aash is about to arrive.”

Chapter Twenty-Five. IN ORBIT GJ 1248 ONE (“ADUMBRATUS”)

As Caine entered Gaspard’s otherwise empty quarters, he ignored the chair toward which the Frenchman waved an inviting hand. “Ambassador, we just heard that Yiithrii’ah’aash is on his way.”

Gaspard nodded. “I have been alerted, as well.”

“Then we need to settle something before we get down to what will probably be the swiftest, and most insufficient, strategic briefing in the annals of diplomacy. I need to know that, as we go forward, you can either ensure Ms. Veriden’s compliance with the protocols you yourself have approved, or that you put her under my direct command for the duration of this mission. I can’t do my job, otherwise.”

Riordan had expected an argument, possibly a brief tantrum. Instead, Gaspard simply nodded. “You have my apologies, Captain Riordan, and my thanks for salvaging today’s unfortunate situation on the planet. You and the entire legation were placed at risk. As was its chance of success. I have spoken with Ms. Veriden and she will follow the protocols I set for her, or she will spend the remainder of this mission confined to her quarters.”

Caine managed not to reveal his surprise at Gaspard’s frank and eminently sane response. “Thank you, Ambassador.” He took the indicated seat. “Actually, what concerns me most is that she didn’t inform us of her intent to avoid the Slaasriithi markers, and then did not alert us to that fact immediately afterward.”

Gaspard held helpless hands aloft. “I am often at a loss to explain her behavior. She is an intrinsically suspicious and cautious person, and so, she does not say much. Which I usually find quite agreeable in a guard.”

“But not so much, today?” Hwang added with a rueful smile.

Gaspard returned the expression. “It is as you say, Doctor. Today, I could have wished for her to be more communicative, more informative. Which is a natural segue to the business before us: in the matter of the experts’ xenosociological projections about the Slaasriithi, did they advance any theories about—?” The privacy chime sounded. Gaspard sighed. “Reality has preempted theorizing, it seems.” He rose. “Please enter.”

Yiithrii’ah’aash entered the room. He did so slowly, almost cautiously.

He stopped when Ben Hwang rose. “I mean no offense, Dr. Hwang, but you do not have sufficient clearance to remain for this particular meeting. My sincere regrets.”

Gaspard’s chin came up slightly. “Captain Riordan does not have my diplomatic rating, either, yet you are evidently prepared to allow him to stay.”

“Ambassador, Captain Riordan may remain because his standing with us is commensurate with the clearance assigned to you by your government.”

“In what way?”

“Allow me to ask you a question, Ambassador Gaspard. From what authority does your position as ambassador-plenipotentiary derive?”

“The political will of the Consolidated Terran Republic. Through that authority, I am empowered to make decisions for my species.”

“Yes. And Captain Riordan has an oft-demonstrated gift for understanding other species. This makes him a necessary part of our communication and so my race extends him recognition and standing equal to your own. We are pleased to have him remain, just as we were pleased to request him for our first contact in the Sigma Draconis system.”

Ben nodded and started toward the door. “If you’ll excuse me.”

Yiithrii’ah’aash made one deep, slow neck-bob and held it until Hwang had left. “I would very much regret if the doctor was affronted by my insistence upon protocols.”

“I doubt he was,” Gaspard commented diffidently, gesturing for the ambassador to sit. Which he did, although that posture more resembled a well-supported squat.

Yiithrii’ah’aash swiveled his head to focus directly upon Gaspard. “Ambassador, I must regrettably begin our meeting by insisting that you take whatever steps are necessary to exert greater control over your personnel.”

Caine interrupted. “I take full responsibility for Ms. Veriden’s actions—”

Yiithrii’ah’aash raised an objecting pair of finger-tendrils. “It has already been established that Ms. Veriden is not your responsibility. The matter lies with Ambassador Gaspard. It is his personal security assistant who has, within the space of one day, twice violated our requirements.”

Gaspard nodded noncommittally. “Yes, although I suspect the second incident might not have occurred had I been given time to confer with her regarding the full significance of her first violation. But our immediate departure after Captain Riordan recovered from the anti-intruder gas precluded that discussion. Similarly, with more time and warning, we could have better coordinated our visit to Adumbratus, or least selected the right persons for inclusion.”

Yiithrii’ah’aash’s tendrils drooped. “While your analysis is no doubt accurate, it ignores our initial stipulation: that every member of your legation must visit these introductory planets. This prepares you to move about freely upon our homeworld, to help you understand and distinguish between the various taxae of my species and how best to interact with them.”

Riordan folded his arms. “While we’re on the topic of interacting with the locals, I noticed that the creature which pursued Ms. Veriden had a marked aversion to me. What did you do to ensure that my biomarkers were so much more effective than the others’?”

Yiithrii’ah’aash waved languorous tendrils. “Your preparation was no different from the others.”

Caine heard the evasive tone. “But that’s not the same thing as saying you don’t know why the creature had a stronger reaction to me.” He waited.

After several seconds, Yiithrii’ah’aash buzz-purred. “No, it is not the same statement. But I only possess conjectures on this matter, not knowledge. And there is no way to conclusively test my hypotheses.”

Gaspard leaned his fine-boned chin into his long-fingered hand. “Even so, I am most interested in your speculations.”

Yiithrii’ah’aash tilted his sensor-cluster in Caine’s direction. “This is not Captain Riordan’s first contact with our biota.”

Caine was stunned that he had not thought of this before. “Of course. The natives on Delta Pavonis Three. They probably still mark fauna, and visitors, with pheromones.”

Yiithrii’ah’aash raised attention-commanding digits from either pseudo-hand. “Since the primitives there have not entirely reverted, and since interspeciate pheromone-marking predates our tool-use, I suspect that you were multiply and powerfully marked on Delta Pavonis Three. But after at least twenty millennia of genetic recidivism and drift, that planet’s primitives may have marked you with pheromones that we no longer recognize.”

“But how would any pheromones remain active so long?” Gaspard wondered, frowning. “The captain visited Delta Pavonis Three over two years ago. Since then, he has twice been purged in preparation for extended periods of cryogenic suspension. How could a marking persist through all that?”

Yiithrii’ah’aash’s fingers writhed in apparent uncertainty. “I cannot say. However, markings have different depths. Most are superficial and can be removed by several meticulous bathings. However, some are not merely external but internal. They introduce microorganisms that produce the needed pheromones for excretion through fluids, perspiration, even wastes. Such markings could persist for years. Perhaps decades. Perhaps longer.”

Caine nodded, forced himself to sit calmly as his mind shouted: And our best decontamination procedures and most advanced biological screening didn’t detect anything? So how the hell do we know what they might choose to put in us now, and which we might be carrying back to the fleet? And then Earth? How do we know these microbes only mark us? And how can we be sure they won’t replicate and spread? Yes, the Slaasriithi have been amicable and helped us against the Arat Kur, but how do we really know they can be trusted? Because they told us so themselves? At the end of Yiithrii’ah’aash’s explanation, Riordan nodded one last time. “That’s very interesting. Thank you for explaining.”

Yiithrii’ah’aash’s neck seemed to collapse, even retract slightly into his torso. “It is we who must thank you for your patience. We not only regret the haste with which this mission was conceived and launched, but we deeply appreciate your willingness to adapt to our means of communication.”

Riordan shook his head. “I do not understand. Your English is flawless, Ambassador Yiithrii’ah’aash.”

“I do not refer to language. I refer to our insistence that you ‘see’ us rather than ‘read about’ us.”

Gaspard’s smile was gracious, if brittle. “It has been challenging, yes.”

“More than challenging, Ambassador Gaspard. It has been the source of Ms. Veriden’s infractions and the cause of Mr. Buckley’s death. And I am sure it has thwarted your efforts to plan for our negotiations, since your species invariably strategizes how to gain objects you strongly value in exchange for objects you value less.”

Hearing it broken down that way, the legation’s sober diplomatic intents suddenly sounded like well-heeled con artistry.

Gaspard cleared his throat. “These are concerns to us, yes. Are they not also to you?”

Yiithrii’ah’aash’s tendrils seemed to spin for a moment: intense frustration? “Not as you mean it. We too hope to create bonds through exchange. We too hope that these exchanges are materially beneficial to us. And, like you, we will not disclose all our future plans or certain details of our deep history. But our concepts of ‘negotiation’ and ‘gain’ are qualitatively different, and the number of secrets we keep is very, very small.”

Caine experienced both a surge of shame and a stab of wariness. If Yiithrii’ah’aash’s depiction of Slaasriithi negotiations and exchange was even partially accurate, it made humanity look like a bunch of grifters and frauds, by comparison. On the other hand, although the Slaasriithi kept few secrets, they did, by Yiithrii’ah’aash’s admission, keep some secrets. Which suggested, by inverse deduction, that those secrets would be very important. Perhaps important, and problematic, enough to necessitate reappraising an alliance with the Slaasriithi.

“We find similar distinctions between ourselves and almost every other species,” Yiithrii’ah’aash hastened to add. “Less so with the Dornaani, but even they record material exchanges the way you do, as well as the passage of events.”

Gaspard frowned. “So your recording of history is fundamentally different from ours?”

Yiithrii’ah’aash bobbed. “What you call ‘history’ is not a useful concept to us. We notice with interest the linguistic fluke latent in the term you use for narratives of your past: ‘his-story.’ At every level, the focus of your chronicles is upon egocentric personalities: who did what, which group of combatants won and gained specific resources, and how contending philosophies of different peoples sparked both intercultural debates and religious wars.” His neck contracted sharply. “We lack internecine analogs for these events; they only arise when we deal with other races.”

Gaspard raised his hands in appeal. “But in order to deal with the other races of the Accord, you must have kept records of your negotiations, what transpired when you sent or received diplomatic and trade delegations.”

“We welcome such contact, Ambassador Gaspard, but we have experienced much less of it than you might suppose. Only the Dornaani ever displayed much interest in our society. And if you are using ‘trade’ as a synonym for commerce, you must understand that this is not our way.”

Gaspard was silent for a long moment before responding. “I would like to understand what you mean. But I do not.”

“To us, ‘trade’ means exactly that: an exchange. Among ourselves, we do not buy and sell but rather — what is your word for it? — ah yes; we ‘swap’ things. We do not ‘manufacture’ for ‘markets,’ or maintain competing accounts of personal assets, or track what you call ‘balance of trade.’ There are many reasons for this. Arguably, the most prominent is the absence of your universal tradition of attaching the possession of material goods to narrow genetic lineages.”

Caine felt, rather than saw, the consequences. “So, you have no social unit akin to our nuclear family?”

“Correct. Biologically, our reproductive process is considerably different from yours, as is the manner in which we raise our young. It follows, then, that our species’ individual affiliations and social patterns are equally distinct. For example, because of the innate differences between our taxae, there are no ‘class struggles.’ Our individuals are born to their tasks, and evolved to find them more gratifying than any others.”

Good grief; their evolution has made them the ultimate communists. “I can see that there might be no basis for commerce among your own people, but is there no way for our respective societies to accommodate each other in the matter of material exchanges? If only to facilitate cultural and political connections?”

Yiithrii’ah’aash emitted a slow clicking noise from his tightly furred thorax. “I am certain we may find ways to do so, but I suspect we will seek very different ends from those exchanges. It is in the nature of your species to use commerce as a means of consolidating power. It is in our nature to see exchange as an opportunity to create further harmonies and interdependencies among all biota, in the interest of establishing a peaceful and stable macroecology.”

Gaspard seemed to be grasping for words. “And what sort of — of trade item would be of interest to you, in that context?”

Yiithrii’ah’aash’s answer rode over the top of his eager buzz. “We have read much about your honey bees, particularly the variety you label the ‘bumble-bee.’ We do not know if we would find their sugar-intensive byproduct palatable, but there are other species that surely would. Logically, it would be a powerful ‘reward object’ with which to accelerate behavioral modification in those species. Another byproduct — the pure wax they generate in constructing their shelters — would be useful in various material processes. Lastly, the bee’s selfless communal defense instincts interest those of us who are tasked with refining the security response templates for our various autonomous drones and missiles.”

Caine’s train of thought staggered to a halt, spun about, began inexpertly down a path he had never considered before. “Are you saying that your computers are partly biological?”

“Yes, although some would be more accurately described as partly mechanical. Those systems, which we call OverWatchlings, are rare but also more crucial to us.”

Riordan was careful not to look at Gaspard. Who, he sensed, was pointedly not looking at him. No matter how friendly the Slaasriithi seemed, it would be imprudent to give any outward sign of how pivotal Yiithrii’ah’aash’s last revelation was, and how decisively it might figure in any future negotiations or possible alliance. Caine shifted the topic slightly. “How extensive are your defense needs?”

“Until now, fairly minimal, but we project that the recent hostilities are merely precursors of more to follow. The war resolved very little. The Arat Kur have been temporarily neutralized. The Hkh’Rkh have been contained, but will not remain so for long. The Ktor are stalemated. The Dornaani were not sufficiently alarmed to pay closer heed to the warnings of the Custodians. Your own species has already begun to capitalize upon the technological insights derived from your attackers’ equipment, and is entering its characteristic postcrisis phase: spatial expansion combined with political consolidation. This postwar environment is inherently unstable; there will be further conflicts. We must prepare.”

Yiithrii’ah’aash’s summary was breathtaking in its ruthless and egoless accuracy. “So how large a defense increase will you require? How extensively have you settled this region of space?”

The Slaasriithi’s tendrils waved languidly. “Where life has arisen, there we have remained. And we have had a long time, even by our standards, to nurture biota on even the most inhospitable worlds.”

So, pretty extensive settlement. “I take it, then, that you are well-furnished with shift-carriers, to serve so many systems.”

“Not so well-furnished as you might expect, Caine Riordan. The great majority of our expansion has been effected by slower-than-light ships, many of which are directed by semiautonomous machine biots.”

Gaspard’s question was slow, calm, careful. “You have living, self-directed ships?”

“That characterization would imply a greater degree of awareness than is possessed by these craft. Each ship’s semiautonomous system resembles a highly advanced hive-mind. Its task is simply to deliver its payload from one known place to another known place.”

“I understand,” Gaspard replied in a tone that suggested he might not. “But why do you not prefer to use a crew of intelligent beings? We have seen at least one subtaxon which you specially evol — er, induced, to meet the challenges of working in space. Why not create an even more narrowly specialized subtaxon to live upon your STL ships?”

“Because we eschew generating more subtaxae than is absolutely necessary. The capability to induce a new subspecies or subtaxae does not mean that one should do so whenever it would be most convenient. So, instead of complicating our polytaxic society with yet another subtaxon, we attain our objectives by relying upon the universe’s most underappreciated and yet greatest force.”

Gaspard leaned forward. “And what force might that be?”

Yiithrii’ah’aash purred faintly. “Time, Ambassador. As your own aphorism has it, time changes all things. It wears down mountains, moves continents, even exhausts stars. Perhaps this is one of the reasons we do not record history similarly to other species: our relationship to time itself is different. Your species and the others manipulate time to your own ends, your own pleasure, and even to assure that you will, for at least a while, transcend its limits.”

“You mean, that we perform deeds or create objects that will be associated with us, even after we are dead.”

“Precisely. We do not have these motivations. Indeed, understanding what they truly mean to you remains our greatest interspeciate challenge, since we lack any serviceable analog. We imagine them as a hypertrophied amplification of our self-preservation instinct. But even our self-preservation instinct, while strong, is not so overpowering as your own.”

“Do you mean that you don’t fear death?”

Yiithrii’ah’aash purred again. “That question is the one we hoped you humans would ask. It is worth all the mishaps this mission has stumbled through thus far, if it has prompted you to ask it so soon.”

Gaspard’s eyes were wide. “So you do not fear death?”

Yiithrii’ah’aash’s purr diminished. “I did not say that. But our attitude towards it is so different from yours that you cannot understand us without understanding that difference. We are not defined — even in our diplomatic exchanges — by the number of ships, or planets, or weapons that are at our disposal. We are defined by our macroecological impulse. And no force shapes that impulse more than patience and its corollary: an egoless conceptualization of time. Which, in turn, also shapes our perception of death.”

Caine smiled. “I suspect this is only the first of many conversations we shall have on this topic.”

Yiithrii’ah’aash’s purr grew along with Caine’s smile. “Understanding another race is not something that happens swiftly. But for your species to identify, and to question, this signal difference between us is the beginning of the process of knowing.”

Gaspard rested his chin in his palm. “So this is why your primer mentions no historical figures, cites no earlier Slaasriithi by name.”

“Correct.”

Caine frowned. “But if you have no history of conflict, and your leaders must now deal with it, what models do they have for emulation?”

Yiithrii’ah’aash’s head turned slowly back in Caine’s direction. “This is a matter of deep concern to us. As you have no doubt discerned, we are happy to appease, just as we are willing to be appeased, when disagreements arise. To do so, to compromise, is our preferred method of interaction where harmony has not yet been established. However, we lack a taxon which is inherently capable of conflict, what you might call a warrior caste. If members of such a taxon had existed any time in the last ten millennia, they would have encountered no challenges, no need for their skills. Indeed, they would have been counterproductive to our harmony. According to apocryphal tales of the last such taxon, they devolved into hermits, whose once valuable decisiveness ultimately became disruptive impulsivity.”

Caine tried to tame his leaping speculations to follow only the most pertinent track. “You had other taxae, at one time?”

Yiithrii’ah’aash’s head bobbed. “We have had many for which our need diminished, and ultimately disappeared. But in some cases, that disappearance need not be permanent.”

“You mean you can reverse the process?”

“It is not a simple matter, genetically or socially, to reintroduce a taxon. Sometimes it is impossible if it was lost too long ago or too completely. Our polytaxic structure has many strengths but its complexities can make it especially vulnerable to disasters. If either our social or reproductory matrices are shattered, we are likely to revert, to become a different and devolved species.”

“Like on Delta Pavonis Three,” Caine murmured.

“Just so. As I once said, the natives of that planet are of us, but are not us, not today’s Slaasriithi. They are a genetic throwback to when we had fewer taxae. Consequently, you have already seen a Slaasriithi community that has been shattered. Today you saw one in its infancy, facing an uncertain future: we cannot know if the changes we mean to induce on Adumbratus will become strong enough to create an equilibrium between our biota and the indigenous life. Finally, in a little more than a week, we will show you a Slaasriithi community on the cusp of becoming one of our primary colonies.” Yiithrii’ah’aash stood. “Speaking of which, refueling will soon be complete, and we will begin preacceleration for our next shift. The members of your legation will be permitted to have free access to your ships and your cargo until then. Prepare for a longer sojourn: we shall examine the next planet more closely, as there is much more to see.”

Gaspard smiled. “And fewer untamed dangers to encounter?”

Yiithrii’ah’aash’s voice was grave. “We find that an environment’s dangers do not reside in any of its creatures.”

“No? Then where does the danger reside?”

“In the mind of any visitor who makes the mistake of believing that any environment is ever without danger. Good day, Ambassador, and you as well, Caine Riordan. Please prepare your people for departure.”

Chapter Twenty-Six. CLOSE ORBIT, GJ 1248 THREE and FAR ORBIT, SIGMA DRACONIS TWO

“Nezdeh,” Sehtrek called over his shoulder, “the Slaasriithi ship is breaking from orbit. At full acceleration.”

Nezdeh Srina Perekmeres had not yet crossed from the Arbitrage’s bridge hatchway to the con. “Did they detect us?” Refueling out at GJ 1248’s gas giant, she and Red Lurker had been shielded from the Slaasriithi shift-carrier’s active sensors. Also, there was no sign that the outer planets had been seeded with passive trespass monitors. Nonetheless…

“No indication of detection, Nezdeh. But the target has acted with considerable dispatch ever since the two interface craft returned from the surface of the planet.”

Nezdeh fastened the top clasp of her tunic when no one was looking. Over the past three days, she and Idrem had only had a few intermittent hours when their off-duty cycles overlapped, and this had been one of them — until she had been summoned to the bridge two minutes ago.

Brenlor ducked through the hatchway, waved off Sehtrek’s attempt to update him. He had been aboard Red Lurker when its superior sensor suite had alerted them to the first signs that the target might be preparing to move. “Your assessment, Nezdeh?”

“They mean to make best speed to their shift point.”

“Then we must break off our own refueling immediately and commence preacceleration. That way, we will arrive before them in BD +02 4076 with enough lead time to take on fuel and seek a suitable position from which to ambush them.”

“Assuming they are heading to that system at all,” added Sehtrek.

“And if they are not,” Nezdeh amended, “then we will refuel and seek our fortunes elsewhere. And elsewise.”

Brenlor was able to hear this disappointing possibility with almost complete equanimity now. “We would have little choice. Sehtrek, commence preacceleration for the shift point to BD +02 4076 as soon as our skimmers have returned to their berths.” Leaning over, he asked Nezdeh in a lower voice, “Has Idrem determined the likelihood that the Slaasriithi will see our tug’s antimatter drive, this time?”

Nezdeh nodded. “If we stay in the shadow of the gas giant, and if the target continues to maintain its current course, that will put the star directly between us. They have, at best, a twenty percent chance of detecting us as we accelerate.”

Brenlor did not take his eyes away from the starfield. “I do not like those odds.”

Nezdeh decided to take a chance: changing into the ancient dialect used only among the Srinu of the Creche worlds, she observed, “Twelve weeks ago, you would have found those odds exhilarating.”

Brenlor nodded tightly, answered in the same tongue. “Twelve weeks ago, I was still thinking like an angry Srin, and a prodigal to boot. Now that the die is cast, I think like a man who may one day be a Hegemon.” He turned to face her. “Before our Extirpation, I had no such hopes. I was rash during my first years outside the precinct walls. I resented the Breedmistresses’ prediction that I would never rise high enough to even guard a Hegemon’s dais. Now?” He shrugged. “I may be the last of our line left to ascend that platform myself. And so I school myself to think appropriately.”

Nezdeh put a hand on her cousin’s arm. “And have done so admirably.” She looked at the virtual instruments showing their telemetry and other transit data. “How long?” she asked Sehtrek.

“One hundred and fifty hours.”

Nezdeh rose, relinquishing the con to Brenlor. “Only six days to wait, now.”

His smile was both rueful and feral as he slid into the captain’s chair. “I would not mind if it was a bit longer, this time.”

“Really? Why?”

Brenlor’s smile was now wholly feral. “So I have enough time to prepare our ambush.”

* * *

One hundred and forty-nine hours later, when the Arbitrage reached her shift point, Nezdeh and Brenlor were back on its bridge. In the faux-holograph of the navplot, the green blip of the preaccelerating Slaasriithi ship was headed directly away from them.

“Threshold energy state attained,” the Aboriginal pilot announced. “Shift drive ready.”

“Engage,” Brenlor ordered.

Reality seemed to swim through a hole in itself and emerge on the far side, unchanged — except for the star field and the nearby mass of a gas giant.

The communications officer put a hand to her ear. “Idrem with a sensor report; multiple small objects orbiting the main planet.”

“Size of objects?”

“Initial densitometer readings are imprecise, but they seem to vary between seventy and four-hundred fifty cubic meters. All are spherical.”

Brenlor nodded. “Surveillance satellites and automated craft. Any sign of weapons?”

“Given the distance and our reliance upon passive sensors, Idrem reports that we are unable to discern any. He remarks, however, that the trojan point asteroid fields of the main planet are both highly attenuated and quite dense.”

Brenlor nodded. “We will approach the spinward trojan point carefully and ensure that it has no dormant trespass sensors. If it doesn’t, then we shall spring our ambush from there.”

Nezdeh nodded. “In the meantime, let us fill our tanks at the gas giant so that, if the Slaasriithi shift-carrier does make this its next — and final — destination, we are in readiness.” And then quickly move on, before Tlerek Srin Shethkador catches our scent and sends some stealthy hounds to track us down…

* * *

As soon as Tlerek Srin Shethkador heard Olsirkos enter his spin-chambers, he asked, “You have completed your review of both the general ship’s log and the communications log?”

“Yes, Fearsome Srin. As I reported, Ferocious Monolith’s journey to Sigma Draconis was largely uneventful. In fact, the senior annalist recorded statistically low mortality among the unshielded low-gee helots, of which all deaths were, happily, cull-worthy. As one often encounters on an Aegis ship, there were several disputes that required intervention and summary discipline. One evolved into a formal duel.”

“What do you know about that duel?”

“Very little, Honored Srin. After it was reported to me, I had the senior lictor investigate to ensure there were no security or operational consequences. The senior annalist collected the particulars to make his report. That was the end of the matter.”

“I see. When did the duel occur?”

“Several days before departing the V 1581 system, the last shift on our journey here. The duel involved the second bridge crew’s communications officer and one of his journeyman-trainees. There was no indication that House rivalry was the cause of the duel.”

Shethkador waited for further explication. None came. “The loss of the second communications officer affected crewing, did it not?”

Olsirkos shrugged. “Slightly. The second communications officer was scheduled to transfer to Red Lurker, which we left behind in V 1581 three days later. The first alternate communications specialist was tasked to take his place aboard Lurker. The second alternate, the trainee who won the duel, became the second crew’s communications officer here aboard Monolith.”

“So, as the new secondary comm officer, the trainee’s duties now include maintaining the communications logs, running readiness checks, and monitoring enemy communications, correct?”

“That is correct.”

And still Olsirkos does not see the connection. “Has your new second communications officer brought any unusual enemy communications to your attention?”

Olsirkos frowned. “No, Fearsome Srin.” This time, Olsirkos put extra emphasis upon the word “fearsome.”

“So, shall we presume that he failed to notice this?” Shethkador pressed a stud on his belt-com. Behind him, communications records from twelve days prior rose up as a holoflat. Shethkador had flagged one of the entries in red.

Olsirkos scanned it: a footnote appended to the report of an informer aboard an Aboriginal cargo ship, the RFS Ladoga. Her master, Captain Ludmilla Privek, had hurriedly submitted an exhaustive report concerning the last known whereabouts of a senior-grade cargo worker. This worker, Agnata Manolescu, had been officially missing for ten weeks. However, it seemed probable that her disappearance occurred earlier and that Privek had avoided drawing attention to it, hoping to resolve the matter independently and save face.

Olsirkos’ frown deepened. “Potent Srin, I fail to see—”

“Read every word, seek every nuance. Why, after the worker had been officially missing for over two months, was the master of the ship suddenly compelled—compelled—to submit a complete report, at the direct and confidential order of Lord Admiral Halifax himself?”

Olsirkos scrolled back through the Aboriginal communications traffic. He stopped at an entry dated five days prior to the submission of Privek’s report. “This must be it. The Aboriginals found the cargo worker’s body adrift in space.” His frown returned. “It was not discovered near any currently used orbital track. Why did they even think to look for it?”

Shethkador wondered if Olsirkos’ future might not merely include demotion but an appointment with the cull-master. “Logic dictates that we must return to the beginning of the incident: the first, internal record of Manolescu’s disappearance. Her last known location on the Ladoga was in a cargo bay during a high-priority transfer of cold cells, and you will note their destination.”

Olsirkos’ voice was dry — or possibly strangled with anxiety: “The cold cells were being transferred to the Slaasriithi vessel.”

“Yes. This tells us how the Aboriginals found Agnata Manolescu’s body. Logically, since she disappeared from the bay where the transfer took place, the Aboriginals determined which lighter effected that cargo transfer and then checked its flight recorder data. They performed close sensor sweeps radiating out from its flight telemetries and discovered Manolescu’s corpse spinning slowly away from the lighter’s prior path. The subsequent question is, obviously, why would the person overseeing the transfer of the cargo from the Ladoga be killed?”

Olsirkos’ frown was replaced by wide-eyed revelation. “The cryocells loaded on the lighter were not the ones it had been sent to transfer. Some of the cargo was switched.”

Well, there is some hope for you after all. “Correct. According to our informers in the Aboriginal military structure, two of the coldslept personnel chosen to accompany the legation into Slaasriithi space were never removed from the Ladoga. Their cold cells were later found ‘misfiled’ in the same cargo bay.”

“So, the two coldsleepers who went in their place are infiltrators, sent to sabotage the Aboriginal envoy to the Slaasriithi?”

“Likely, but impossible to determine without investigating. Which we should have been doing for the past ten weeks.”

Olsirkos sounded like he wanted the change the topic. Desperately. “It is strange that the Aboriginals have not detained the crew of the lighter and questioned them.”

“More persistence in reviewing the data would have shown you that they tried and failed.” Shethkador changed the file displayed on the holoflat to a secure bulletin calling for the apprehension of two missing persons of interest: the Aboriginal female and male who had crewed the lighter.

“It is not conceivable that they could remain undetected on one of the fleet’s hulls,” Olsirkos asserted. “So where are they?”

Shethkador brought up a holograph of the interstellar region surrounding Sigma Draconis. He pointed into it: the red star closest to Sigma Draconis flared in response. “The two renegades are almost certainly here: system V 1581. We know that Visser, one of the human Consuls, and a significant intelligence chief named Richard Downing commenced transit to Earth aboard the prize ship Changeling the same day that the Slaasriithi departed. I suspect that the two fugitives, furnished with false identities, were already aboard Changeling when she shifted out to V 1581. So, we must journey there and intercept them before they can flee to Earth: they are the only remaining clues to the rest of the plot.”

Olsirkos was lost again. “The rest of the plot?”

Shethkador rose. “I must recontact the Autarchs. They require an update.” He stared hard at Olsirkos. “The rest of the plot is obvious, or should be. The two who operated the lighter could not have had longstanding orders to switch the cold cells on the Ladoga. Only three days earlier, the Slaasriithi had not even arrived in Sigma Draconis, much less invited the Aboriginals to visit their homeworld. So if you find the persons who signaled the lighter’s crew to switch the cold cells, you will ultimately find the persons who were ready to launch this plot in a matter of hours.” Shethkador brought up the communications logs. One entry was flagged in red. “The day that the Slaasriithi departed, there was a routine communications test, to assess mechanical readiness. Read who oversaw the test.”

Olsirkos stared, swallowed, managed to get out the words: “It was the recently promoted trainee, the one who killed the former second communications officer in a duel.”

Shethkador nodded, walked to the hatchway, exited, made briskly for the Sensorium, Olsirkos trailing behind. “I will make my Reification to contact the Autarchs swift. I will explain that we must return to V 1581 to recover Red Lurker. In actuality, we shall be following the path of the crew of the lighter and whoever contacted them and is behind this plot. You have half an hour to quietly detain and interrogate the communications trainee who won the duel. In the interrogation, presume that you will have to use drugs and extreme measures. Presume that the subject is not a knowledgeable part of the greater plot. Discover how he used the communications testing routines to send the necessary message to the lighter crew, who gave him that message, how he knew where to send it and when.” Shethkador paused before the threshold of the Sensorium. “Impress me by succeeding in this, and I shall overlook your signal failures in detecting this plot from the outset,” he lied.

“I am my Srin’s right hand,” Olsirkos breathed with a low bow.

“Yes,” Shethkador muttered. Which would make me half a cripple, if it were true.

Chapter Twenty-Seven. FAR ORBIT SIGMA DRACONIS TWO

Shethkador wasted no time entering the Sensorium and only partially infusing the essence of one Catalysite. Left undrained, it would hopefully regenerate: they were a finite resource, so far from home. Once on the cushions, he brusquely pushed himself into the entangled particularities of time and space that defined the symbiot’s natural state of sensory awareness. The Autarchs felt the summons and responded with extraordinary speed. Tlerek Srin Shethkador smiled: he might not be well liked, but he was evidently well respected. Or feared.

The formalities and obligatory obeisances were quickly performed and Tlerek informed them of his impending departure to system V 1581. His given reason, to reclaim Red Lurker, was accepted as a matter of course. The small craft could not be left behind indefinitely, and if its limited endurance compelled it to rise up out of the gas giant in which it had been hidden, the possibility of its discovery increased dramatically.

Beren Tval Jerapthere’s question came with a peremptory edge. “What about reestablished communications with the Arat Kur? What progress have you made?”

“For three weeks after our last Reified contact, I endeavored to achieve that daily. I received no response. I believe the Arat Kur are convinced that we, not the so-called ‘Terrans,’ are responsible for the cataclysm that nearly destroyed their society approximately fifteen millennia ago.” A conclusion which was, frankly, inevitable and uncontestable.

“So you believe the Arat Kur are lost to us?”

“Yes. Which is not the same thing as saying that they will become allied with the Terrans. Many of them remain suspicious of all humans. Some are amenable to contact with the Aboriginals. However, the contentious nature of the current negotiations will serve to poison the well of amity for some time to come. And even if the Arat Kur were to put aside their reservations and make common cause against us with the Aboriginals, they would contribute very little to such an effort. The humans are bleeding them dry of ships and industrial output.”

“I did not suspect the Aboriginals would be so materially rapacious.” Ulsor Tval Vasarkas’ comment was slow, measured.

“Most of them are not, but they are divided both between and within their blocs. There are still strong and insistent voices calling for xenocide. To balance against this, moderate factions support the aggressive dismantling of the Arat Kur’s military capabilities, thereby reducing the popular fears upon which the xenocidalists prey.”

“And weakening the Arat Kur so profoundly that they will probably be of no use to our enemies in the next war. Excellent.”

“Yes, but the Aboriginals may make better use of these arrogated ships and resources than the Arat Kur would have. It is difficult to foresee which would have been the better alternative, in light of our future plans. However, a more immediate threat to those plans has arisen: the Slaasriithi invited an Aboriginal envoy to their homeworld mere hours after my last Contact with you.”

“And did the Aboriginals accept?”

“Immediately. They departed that same day.”

Beren Tval Jerapthere’s response was unpleasantly barbed. “This is unacceptable, Srin Shethkador. How did you allow this to occur?”

“Esteemed Autarch, had my advice been followed, it would never have occurred at all. Instead, heavy-handed initiatives have characterized our operations in this entire region of space. This is why the provocative arrival of Ferocious Monolith was ill-conceived. Without the alarm it caused, the Slaasriithi might have maintained their typically glacial pace of cultural contact and exchange. But instead, they pressed for and obtained an immediate diplomatic mission from the Aboriginals.”

“You must contrive a way to stop them from realizing their objectives.”

“What method do you propose?”

“The most reliable: follow their ship and destroy it.”

“I reply with as much deference as I may muster, and more respect than such a plan is due: nothing could be more injurious to our plans. Our willingness to destroy such a mission will signal to both powers that we fear nothing so much as the possibility of a swift alliance between them. And so, they will be quick to conclude one.”

Tlerek could almost hear Beren’s teeth grinding across the many parsecs. “I do not propose the elimination of the envoy be done openly.”

“I do not suppose you did, but we cannot ensure secrecy if we undertake the ambush you so blithely suggest. We are not familiar with Slaasriithi space. They have been the most reticent of all the races and have been most effective patrolling their borders against our covert surveys, despite their lower technological level.”

Ruurun’s confirmation was patient, studied. “The Srin is correct. We would be proceeding blindly and without any plausible pretext.”

“Precisely,” Shethkador agreed, grateful that House Tharexere did not have as much vigor as it had wisdom. “And if such a trespass is detected, the probable loss of the ship would be a paltry matter compared to the diplomatic damage. We will have pushed two races together into an alliance against us, whereas, unprompted, they might require years of diplomatic exchange before concluding such a pact.”

Davros’ contact was cautious. “Agreed, but is detection so likely? The Slaasriithi are most decidedly our technological inferiors.”

“The Slaasriithi are well behind us in military and space technology, but their sensors are subtle, small, predominantly nonmetallic. And the Slaasriithi are patient. Their seeming lethargy conceals an extraordinary unity of action and fixity of purpose. Unlike the Aboriginals, who will bicker over plans incessantly and change them midcourse, the Slaasriithi are doubtless responding to the late war by increasing the sophistication, precision, and quantities of their remote sensor platforms.”

“Not active, crewed defenses?”

“Not at first, and not primarily. The Slaasriithi will, rightly, be more concerned about furnishing the Custodians with incontrovertible evidence of any violations of their space.”

Ulsor’s contact was grim. “And so, they would have the Custodians do their fighting for them.”

“Yes, which is also the path of action stipulated by the Accords. So, in reporting our intrusion, they would both have the legal right of the matter, and also awaken the one foe that might still defeat us if sufficiently aroused and committed: the Dornaani. That is an eventuality we must avoid at all costs.”

“Your contact grows weak, Tlerek Srin Shethkador,” Davros sent with extra strength.

“My gratitude for your counsel and attention, Autarchs.” Shethkador let the link slip away — and suddenly he was back in the Sensorium, fixed in one time and one place, perceiving no greater connections to the universe around him than those which could be established by the reach of his eyes, ears, nose. His nose might be particularly useful, now, he reflected: he wondered if he could smell the stink of Olsirkos’ fear, who was no doubt waiting just beyond the well-guarded iris valve.

Shethkador was not disappointed in half of his prediction; his executive officer was waiting there, but without any discernible odor of fear. “I have news, Fearsome Srin.”

I’m sure you do. “Inform me.”

“There is, as you suspected, a deeper plot that connects the murder of the cargo worker aboard the Ladoga, and the outcome of the duel fought aboard Ferocious Monolith. The communications trainee had no quarrel with the second communications officer. He was paid to instigate the duel, and then send one of several prearranged signals to the lighter’s mother ship. What is most interesting is that the person who secured his services in exchange for this assistance—”

“—was the first alternate communications officer, the one who ultimately replaced the dead officer aboard Red Lurker.”

Olsirkos dropped behind; he had stopped walking. “You knew.”

Shethkador managed to repress a smile. Mostly. “The interrogation of the duelist was simply a matter of confirming the obvious. Is he still alive, by the way?”

“Yes, Fearsome Srin. Shall I vac him?”

“Imbecile! This is not deep space, back home. We must protect our genelines from Aboriginal analysis for as long as possible.”

“Then how do you wish me to dispose of him?”

Shethkador considered: there was no value to retaining the traitor. His employers would doubtless have understood — far, far better than he — just how likely this outcome was. He would not possess any evidentiary or informational value. “Send a summons to all autarchons and lictors who came into Aegis service because their Houses or Families were Extirpated. Have them gather in the observation gallery of the after docking bay. Place the traitor in the bay and evacuate the atmosphere slowly, without opening the doors. Let them watch his death and be reminded that this is what befalls those who would help to restore genelines upon which Extirpation has been decreed.”

Olsirkos frowned. “As you order, it shall be, Fearsome Srin, but…”

“Yes?”

“Why such emphasis upon Extirpated Houses and Families?”

“Because that was the root of all these crimes. Have you examined the background of the communications officer you ultimately assigned to Red Lurker?”

“I am ashamed to say that I completed the interrogation mere minutes before arriving at the Sensorium.”

Probably true. “Here is what you will find: her name is Nezdeh, a former Srina of House Perekmeres. She was behind much, if not all, of the planning and collusion and bribery that we have now uncovered. You will also find, if you research deeply enough, that many of the Undreaming who were awakened to round out the crew of the Lurker were not who they were purported to be. They were more renegades from House Perekmeres.”

Olsirkos shook his head. “But to what end would they fashion such a strange plot? If they seize Red Lurker, where may they go? Without us, they will remain stranded in system V 1581.”

“Will they? They are too adept at overcoming obstacles for me to rely upon that assumption. They have suborned human agents among the civilian auxiliaries of the Aboriginal fleet. They were able to infiltrate cryocelled Terran collaborators into a diplomatic mission with only twenty-four hours notice. So I am unwilling to make any presumptions regarding what capabilities they do and do not have. We may only be sure of this: as renegades, they will take every possible precaution to remain undetected. And also, having no House left to support them, they must have sponsors among either the Autarchs, the Hegemons of the Great Houses, or both.”

“Yes, Fearsome Srin”—and Olsirkos did genuinely seem to be awestruck at Shethkador’s calm, confident unfolding of the conspiracy—“but I still do not understand how the architect of this plot could be located in V 1581 and yet be influencing events that were taking place here.”

“That mystery is not solved by a single answer, but rather two. The first part is that the Slaasriithi invitation to the Aboriginals was not wholly unforeseeable. Therefore, it is possible, if unlikely, that the duelist you just interrogated was left with a complex flowchart of contingency orders to execute, as dictated by subsequent occurrences. This alone could have produced the chain of events we have uncovered. But I suspect there is a second, more likely, answer to how these renegades managed to influence events in another star system.

“Only hours after Monolith left V 1581, another preaccelerated Arat Kur prize hull—Mimic—shifted into that system from Sigma Draconis, probably carrying a warning of our sudden appearance there. It seems likely that the ex-Srina Perekmeres — or her sponsors — had agents aboard Mimic, who reported the Slaasriithi’s diplomatic overtures to the Aboriginals. The ex-Srina then contacted the new second communications officer.”

“So she is Awakened?”

“Almost certainly.”

“But what are these traitors hoping to accomplish?”

“That we cannot know until we track them down. But they clearly intend to compromise the Aboriginal legation to the Slaasriithi homeworld.”

“So our travel to V 1581 to retrieve Red Lurker is but a stalking horse to conceal our investigation into the connections between this plot and rogue elements of the former House Perekmeres.”

“Exactly.”

They had returned to Shethkador’s spin quarters. “Dominant Srin,” Olsirkos breathed, “you have been inconceivably kind to show me the workings of your mind, that I may be inspired and educated by them.”

Shethkador resisted the urge to rub his eyes. “Yes, of course. Now, commence preacceleration for shift to V 1581. I had expected to depart this wretched region of space as soon as I was repatriated. Now I must investigate a pack of meddlesome renegades who should have been culled with the rest of their scrofulous breed.”

“At least, being renegades, they are desperate and possess little real power. After all, how much damage could they do?”

Shethkador fixed Olsirkos with a brutal stare, compelling his irises to contract into pinpricks of contempt and dismissal. “Since they have nothing to lose, what won’t they do?”